“I started at my school 11 years ago and my current role did not exist at that time.”

For Joanne Thompson - now social, emotional and mental health coordinator at Royds Hall, a SHARE Academy - the shift within education to recognise the importance of mental health is something she has witnessed first-hand - as her job title underlines.

“There was very little wellbeing provision across any secondary schools [when I joined],” she recalls.

However, over the past decade or so the issue has gained a lot more prominence, not least because numerous research papers have shown that good wellbeing is intertwined with academic success. The same is true for teachers: good mental health for teachers means better educational outcomes.

This focus led to the government publishing a Green Paper in 2018 outlining a series of objectives around improving mental health provision in schools, including plans for mental health support teams (MHST) and training for senior staff on mental health.

Then the pandemic came along - with the effect of pushing mental health up the agenda and at the same time exacerbating the issue even further with children and teachers alike both affected by its impact.

This has made initiatives such as those mentioned above even more important, while also sparking new efforts around promoting good mental health across education.

Funding and training for schools on mental health 

Some are more symbolic than policy, such as the Department for Education’s Education Staff Wellbeing Charter that was unveiled early this year, with the government promising to consider staff mental health in the context of any new policy initiatives. Schools and colleges can also sign up to the charter to show their commitment to staff on mental health.

More direct action, though, is being taken, with proposals from the Green Paper starting to (almost) see the light of day. Schools will soon be able to apply for £1,200 in funding to send senior staff to attend mental health training courses.

The DfE says this will help leaders to “develop your setting’s holistic approach to promoting and supporting the mental wellbeing of pupils, students and staff”.

Sarah Hannafin, senior policy adviser at the NAHT school leaders’ union, says the fact that this funding is imminently available is an important development, especially in the context of the past 18 months.

“To be able to send a senior staff member on funded training to make sure they feel confident in leading what the school is doing around mental health, and what more they can do, is a great development,” she says.

School leaders feel the same, with Michelle Roddy, assistant headteacher and mental health lead at secondary school St Bonaventure’s in Forest Gate, East London, saying it is arriving at just the right time.

“A lot of pressure is put on schools to support the mental health of their students and this is an area that teachers do not always feel confident or equipped to deal with,” she says.

“Having funding in place shows a commitment to student wellbeing and an awareness that there will be a training need for the staff in schools.”

Thompson feels likewise: “The offer of funding for senior mental health leads will hopefully assist schools in accessing a high level of quality training for staff.”

Unsurprisingly, both intend to submit applications as soon as possible. Roddy says her school may use the funding to train up more staff on mental health and broaden their skill set in this area, or she may attend an advanced training course to further upskill her knowledge.

Thompson, meanwhile, says she intends to put the funding towards the cost of a master’s course at Leeds Beckett University that has already been accredited by the DfE.

“This will help us to further embed the already solid wellbeing provision we have in school, and assist us to work with wider agencies and the community around us,” she says.

Not enough to go around

Many others are likely planning the same and itching to hit submit on their applications.

However, many may be disappointed, with the government saying there will only be enough funding for around one third of all state schools to sign up, meaning many will miss out at first.

It has said it intends to issue enough funding for all schools by 2025 but that could mean many are waiting several years: “It’s not ideal,” notes Hannafin, while Thompson says it would be “very frustrating” to miss out this year on the funding.

No doubt this is the situation many will face.

However, if the government’s 2025 promise comes good then in three and a bit years all schools should, if they wish, have received the funding. Surely that will be worth the wait if it means all schools are able to manage mental health issues in school?

Who helps the schools?

Hannafin agrees that would be a good outcome - but at the same time it would bring another issue even more sharply into focus: the support services that schools rely on to help with the most serious mental health issues remain underfunded and overstretched.

“We know there is not the capacity in children’s mental health services to cope with demand and members [of the NAHT] often find it frustrating how long the waiting times are for support or how high the thresholds are to receive help,” she says.

“We need those services - child therapists, language therapists, educational psychologists, the police - to be able to help. We can’t have teachers stepping in to do things they are not trained to do.”

Roddy concurs. “Teachers are not experts, doctors, therapists - there is lots we can do but we remain limited by virtue of the fact that we are not mental health experts or practitioners,” she says.

She says funding for child and adolescent mental health services (Camhs) and on-site counsellors and other specialist support needs to be improved. 

Margaret Mulholland, SEND and inclusion policy specialist at the Association of School and College Leaders, says this issue is just as stark around special educational needs and disability students, too.

“The availability of educational psychologists to support assessment and to offer ongoing specialist support is key for special settings and for supporting children with SEND in mainstream,” she says.

“System capacity must improve so that Camhs can respond in a timely way to what schools identify as urgent and not just react to crisis.”

If this does not happen, though, the concern is that school staff will end up in a Cassandra situation where they see an issue developing but nothing is done until it reaches a critical level.

“If you are trained to spot something and then try to get help and none is forthcoming, that’s no good for anyone,” adds Hannafin.

We need to start young

This is something that Melanie Pilcher, quality and standards manager at the Early Years Alliance, is concerned about, too, noting how long-term mental health problems often start from a very young age. “We know mental health problems don’t just begin at five years old,” she says.

Indeed, an NHS survey from 2017 found that “one in 18 (5.5 per cent of) preschool children were identified with a mental disorder”, with 6.8 per cent of boys and 4.2 per cent of girls affected.

However, despite this there are no plans for EYFS settings to be able to apply for the funding from government - something Pilcher says is a big oversight: “We know what we do in early years has a huge impact on mental health and wellbeing, so it’s such a missed opportunity.”

This concern becomes even more pronounced when considered in the context of a recent National Foundation for Educational Research report that found many teachers of Year 1 pupils and those in EYFS had seen a rise in mental health issues over the course of the pandemic.

“Primary leaders were concerned about the emotional and academic readiness of their youngest pupils because the pandemic represents a large proportion of their lives,” it reported.

“Some children had not attended preschool toddler groups and had missed opportunities to develop social and relationship-building skills before starting school.”

Pilcher says spending more on wellbeing provision in early years now could be vital to stop issues occurring a long way in the future: “The investment should go into early years, so we are not solving problems and firefighting [later on] but doing something about it before it gets to that critical point.”

Pilcher repeatedly turns to the words “huge missed opportunity” in this context, underlining the scale of her frustration at the situation. Nevertheless, she does acknowledge that it is positive that the mental health and wellbeing of the youngest learners is now being discussed more openly, even in EYFS.

“We talk a lot about personal and social education but we are now recognising that the words ‘mental health’ and ‘wellbeing’ are part of that - that is something we have not done before,” she says.

A more open dialogue

This new, open stance on mental health is, as noted, also now much more widely understood among staff, too - something Roddy says she has seen since entering the profession in 2005.

“Staff are encouraged to talk more about their feelings, have received training on how to support someone who is struggling, and it has led to a focus on workload and the quality of CPD offered, as research shows these can have a significant impact on staff wellbeing,” she says.

She says this is why the wellbeing charter - which her school has signed up to - is a useful development to help settings give their work in this area focus.

“The charter provides a clear framework for schools to develop and enhance their policies and practices around wellbeing,” she says.

“It acknowledges the importance of staff mental health and recognises key areas of school life which can have a pivotal impact on wellbeing, such as workload, staff voice, professional development.”

Steve Rippin, assistant headteacher and Sendco at Tapton School in Sheffield - who was involved in the original working group to create the charter - has a similar view.

“Signing up to the wellbeing charter is key in showing staff that we care about them and their mental health and wellbeing, and in practice will continue to work towards supporting staff wellbeing,” he says.

“I think that the senior staff mental health lead training which is available from the DfE is a welcome offer, which further supports the work of raising awareness of health and wellbeing and links well with the wellbeing charter.”

And, as mentioned earlier, it’s not just schools that can sign up to this but the government and Ofsted have also committed to it with some promising-sounding claims, such as ensuring that workload implications are considered with any new initiatives.

Hannafin is cautiously optimistic about this, saying it needs to be watched closely: “We need to see government live up to the commitment they have made. It’s too new to have seen anything yet but it needs to be taken seriously.”

One imagines it won’t be too long before that chance arises.

More sector-specific help

However, for Mulholland the priority is that initiatives like the wellbeing charter do deliver actionable help for staff - something that, after the past 18 months, is crucial: “Leaders and teachers will have particular concerns that all staff in specialist settings are given access to some form of professional support themselves.”

She says more needs to be done to recognise the specific and often unique needs of special settings within a wellbeing context.

“We have urged the DfE to channel recovery funding directly to schools and colleges, which will allow them to tailor training and development to the specific needs of their staff,” she adds.

“What is needed is a complete overhaul of funding and support for those with SEND and their teachers to avoid this group becoming another separate disadvantaged group.”

One way to help the situation could be increasing the scope of mental health support teams (MHST) to ensure they can be called on by all SEND settings.

Currently, the plan is for there to be 400 of these teams by 2023 and to date, the NHS has said there are “over 280 mental health support teams set up or in training” and “183 teams are operational”.

This sounds impressive but this means only 15 per cent of pupils in England are covered by an MHST, while plans for a further 103 teams by 2023 would still mean just over one-third of all pupils would be covered.

Hannafin says it is clear more needs to be done: “With MHSTs in place in only a small proportion of schools, the majority of children and young people with mild to moderate mental health needs will continue to struggle to access the support they need,” she says.

“There must be a more concerted effort to roll out mental health support teams across the country.”

She notes, too, that even if this happened, it would not solve the problem around the lack of support from specialists to help pupils most in need.

“MHSTs are there to support pupils with mild to moderate mental health needs. Many children and young people need access to more specialist mental health services, so it is absolutely vital the capacity of those services is also increased.”

Whether that happens remains to be seen. Given the ongoing developments around mental health provision in schools, though, it could be that it spurs further investment in support services if the need for their help is made even more apparent.

Within the education sector itself it is clear that despite well-founded concerns around gaps in mental health provision externally, there is a sense of positive momentum around how ensuring good mental health for pupils and staff is now being talked about, promoted and funded.

For Thompson, whose role exists because of the fact that mental health is now understood to be a central plank of what schools need to focus on to ensure a good education for their pupils, the key is ensuring that this progress continues.

“It is vitally important we continually educate our students and our staff on ways to keep mentally healthy and look after themselves.”