Extra government funding for school staff mental health training announced this week will not be enough to fix the “catastrophic effects” of the pandemic on student mental health, heads’ leaders have warned.
Today, the department announced a further £7 million to support training for up to 8,000 more schools to train a school mental health lead, and said that more than 8,000 schools and colleges had claimed the £1,200 grant between October 2021 and March 2022, which it said was “well above ambitions to reach one-third of settings”.
New data released today revealed that the take-up of the grant in secondary schools is so far over half (52 per cent), while just over a third (34 per cent) of primary schools have accessed the grant. The government aims for all schools to have received the grant by 2025.
But leaders have warned that schools need “practical help” to access specialist services as well as a reduction in the “sometimes significant waiting times to access mental health support”.
Margaret Mulholland, SEND and inclusion policy specialist for the Association of School and College Leaders (ASCL), has warned that while extra funding to “further extend the availability of mental health support lead training in schools” is “obviously welcome”, the government is “playing catch-up” with a situation that was an issue before the pandemic and is even more so now.
The extra cash announced today has brought the total amount of funding for senior mental health leads for the 2022-23 financial year to £10 million.
The DfE said that funding announcements for the initiative will be made annually as they know that some schools will want to apply for training now and some at a later date, and it is “supporting schools to do that whilst also ensuring there is sufficient training capacity throughout the year”.
Of the more than 23,000 schools that were eligible to apply from 11 October last year, 8,280 successfully claimed a grant up to 31 March 2022.
This means that over a third (35 per cent) of the total number of settings that were eligible to apply have already done so.
The Department for Education said that every school that completed an application in full for the 2021-22 financial year was successful, and that grants were allocated on a first-come-first-served basis. It added that the waiting list after the first funding announcement was cleared after an additional £3 million was allocated in February, meaning schools could begin training by this month.
But Ms Mulholland said that, while the staff training “will help”, it is not enough to support the “thousands of pupils struggling right now with potentially catastrophic mental health issues as a direct result of the isolation and loss of normal routines suffered during the pandemic”.
She added that “more support is needed to allow schools and colleges to identify and access the specialist services and expertise available in the wider community, as well as in bringing down the sometimes significant waiting times to access mental health support”.
Today’s data has also revealed that almost all (98 per cent) of leads claiming a grant are carrying out the role alongside others.
Almost a third (30 per cent of applicants) were also a safeguarding lead, over a fifth a Sendco (22 per cent) and 19 per cent a pastoral lead.
The senior mental health lead role was also often carried out by a headteacher, deputy head or assistant head (18 per cent, 17 per cent and 18 per cent of applicants, respectively).
While over a third of schools have applied for a grant so far, two-thirds have as yet not done so. The DfE has said it will continue to communicate the offer to schools and engage regionally and locally where take-up is low, to understand why this is and encourage increased engagement.
Regional disparities
DfE data shows just a third (33 per cent) of schools applied for the funding in the East of England region, compared to almost half (47 per cent) in the West Midlands.
The scheme was first launched in September of last year, with up to 7,800 schools able to sign up for a £1,200 grant aimed at training senior leaders in the knowledge and skills they need “to roll out an effective ‘whole school or college approach’ to mental health and wellbeing, embedding it into their culture and making it a priority alongside academic recovery”.
Senior mental health leads are tasked with identifying those who need support and improving access to specialist services.
The training scheme was first announced in the government’s Green Paper of 2017, but the opportunities for schools to apply for funding to train a mental health lead were not made available until last year.
The government previously said that 400 mental health support teams will be up and running across 3,000 schools in England, offering support to almost 3 million pupils by 2023.
