The government must immediately adopt league table indicators for measuring wellbeing in our schools to avert an epidemic of mental health problems among the young, Sir Anthony Seldon, vice-chancellor of the University of Buckingham, said today.

Sir Anthony, who introduced wellbeing lessons for his students when he was headteacher of Wellington College, said that the government risked being accused of “wilful negligence” by parents of affected children.

He said the government’s failure to take wellbeing seriously has resulted in “massive and avoidable” suffering among young people.

“The evidence is totally clear that wellbeing interventions enhance wellbeing and allow students and young people to cope best with problems,” Sir Anthony said. “As long as the only metric on which schools are being assessed is their exam performance, our schools will never have the incentive to take wellbeing as seriously as they should.

 “It is perfectly clear to me, after being a head of schools for 20 years, that parents will pay more heed to the wellbeing tables than to the exam league tables. They know, even if the government doesn’t, that schools that prioritise wellbeing, which includes challenging and stretching students, also build character and help them to perform better than those schools which are just exam factories.”

‘Focusing on wellbeing improves exam results’

He added that a focus on wellbeing and character would improve exam results, while a focus on exam results alone diminished wellbeing and would not necessarily prepare students for work because employers also value character.

“Running a university now, it has become even clearer to me that by the time students arrive at 18, the damage has been done, and universities are on the back foot,” Sir Anthony said, speaking at the Tatler Schools Live! conference. “The groundwork needs to be done in schools.

“In the last three years, many state and independent schools have started taking wellbeing seriously, but they face a massive discouragement because of the lack of recognition of their work. Only a change in league tables by the introduction of wellbeing measures will make the difference.”

His call comes after a study by the youth charity YMCA found that 38 per cent of young people with mental health difficulties felt they were stigmatised for them.

And earlier this year the Association of School and College Leaders and the National Children’s Bureau warned that more than half (55 per cent) of the heads they surveyed said they had seen a large increase in students suffering from anxiety and stress.

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