The issue of children’s mental health is rising up the political agenda, including during this general election. But the policy establishment’s attempts to address the subject in relation to schools are characteristically shallow. And they suffer from one glaring flaw: a failure to investigate the effects of education policy itself on children’s wellbeing.

Friday’s Tes led with a jaw-dropping account of a girl who was driven to attempt suicide in order to be seen by child and adolescent mental health services (Camhs).

But are policymakers, who have addressed the subject repeatedly in the past year, really getting to grips with the underlying problems? Not at all.

Official reports and manifestos offer no meaningful consideration of the impact of schools policy on children’s wellbeing.

Surprisingly, one of the most shocking examples of this was the recent joint report by the Commons Education and Health select committees, Children and young people’s mental health - the role of education.

In mitigation, it is worth pointing out that the investigation was cut short by the early general election and it does include some important recommendations, such as criticism of cuts to Camhs.

Yet its report had only glancing references to education policy, and whether it - and, particularly, changes to curriculum and assessment regimes in the name of “raising standards” - might be contributing to anxiety.

Overlooking the issues

While it devoted nine paragraphs to considering the impact of social media on children, only three went to “balancing academic and emotional wellbeing”. The report says that “schools and colleges should have a responsibility for promoting the wellbeing of their pupils” but omits policy-makers from that reckoning.

It says Ofsted inspections should focus on pupil wellbeing. This echoes a recommendation also made in an Education Policy Institute report on the same subject in November. This came with the arguably anxiety-soaked title Time to Deliver, and is also light on analysis of the impact of schools policy. Neither report acknowledges the irony of using an anxiety-loading accountability regime to seek to reduce pupil anxiety.

Even more striking, arguably, was the education select committee’s April report on primary assessment. This yielded one paragraph on the pressures on pupils over key stage 2 results, with the committee reporting concerns but ending with the seemingly dismissive statement: “However, this view wasn’t echoed in all schools that submitted evidence, nor with the teachers and school pupils we met over the course of the inquiry.”

A footnote attached to this sentence points to a single school visit. The report offers no recommendations for policymakers in the light of this, pointing instead only at headteachers, who should, apparently, “ensure that external assessment does not result in unnecessary stress for pupils”.

Surveying the manifestos, it is hard to avoid the impression of important issues being skated over.

Theresa May’s high-profile pledge to offer first-aid training in mental health for teachers is, of course, addressing symptoms rather than causes. This is one of five promises on children’s mental health in the Tory manifesto, none of which addresses why children might be feeling under pressure in the first place.

Could, just perhaps, the Conservatives’ expansion of grammar schools, with their potentially life-defining tests at age 11, add to the pressures facing children? No prizes for guessing that this is not mentioned in the section on children’s mental health.

Raising the stakes

Positively, Labour pledges to spend £90 million on improving counselling in schools, offers a review of key stage 1 and KS2 assessment which surely would have to include some consideration of its effects on pupils, and offers an Index of Child Health, with mental health one of four indicators. Its commitment to adult education might usefully lower the stakes of teenage exams for some.

But again, nowhere in the document is there consideration of whether England’s high-stakes school accountability regime may be contributing to anxiety levels.

The Liberal Democrat manifesto’s education section includes warm phrases such as “instilling a passion for lifelong learning”. But again, the question as to whether policy itself - especially high-stakes accountability - contributes to anxiety is nowhere.

Perhaps policymakers have simply placed this question in the “too hard” box. The view is that we need to push for higher standards from schools and pupils, and therefore we can’t think too long about any side-effects.

But here are my not-exactly-going-out-on-a-limb hypotheses: moves such as toughening up curricula and exams have had side-effects for some students. They are contributing to anxiety, for some. A narrow focus on particular subjects increases anxiety by reducing options for pupils to find something at which they thrive.

And the pressure on staff to raise results or face the institution’s closure or takeover cannot but make the schools they work in be seen as places of anxiety - again, for some.

Reject that if you like. But policy seems not even to be investigating it. As I’ve written before, policy changes now take place without any attempt to assess their potential impact at the level of the pupil. Where are the pledges to investigate in detail how schooling really now looks from the pupil perspective? Absent.

The Conservative manifesto also includes a pledge to publish a green paper on young people’s mental health this year. If the party is re-elected, that paper needs to include a pledge at least to investigate the effect of education policy on anxiety in schools.

If it does not, we will know once and for all how deep this government’s commitment goes on this issue.

Warwick Mansell is a freelance education journalist and author of Education by Numbers. You can read his back catalogue here. He tweets @warwickmansell.

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