After Mental Health Week, David Henderson reports on the growing emphasis on well-being in schools
NATIONAL priorities in education dovetail with the improved well-being of pupils, Mary Mulligan, Deputy Health Minister, said.
Local authorities were now under a duty to ensure education services were targeted at the personality, talents and mental and physical abilities of individual pupils.
All new community schools were committed to becoming health promoting agencies. Mrs Mulligan, former education committee convener in the Scottish Parliament, said the Health Promoting Schools Unit in Dundee would help develop further initiatives.
Gregor Henderson, director of the Scottish Executive’s national programme on mental health, predicted a major drive to involve young people and schools over the next 18 months once authorities act on the recommendations of the inquiry into child and adolescent mental health.