Schools are being left to deal with a “tsunami of pressures” hitting pupils’ wellbeing, leaders warn as a Department for Education report finds children’s mental health is struggling to recover post-pandemic.
The warning comes after the DfE published a report today looking at children’s wellbeing in England, which revealed there has been “inconsistent recovery of children and young people’s mental and physical health towards pre-pandemic levels”.
Leaders said the findings are “extremely worrying” and called for schools to be given more support to deal with the fallout.
While happiness with school remains at a similar level to previous years, more children are reporting “low happiness” with school, according to the report, which includes research by The Children’s Society as well as forthcoming DfE findings.
Paul Whiteman, general secretary of the NAHT school leaders’ union, said the “extremely worrying findings” equated with the experiences of members, who had seen the “damaging impact of the pandemic and cost-of-living crisis on children exacerbate long-standing concerns around young people’s wellbeing and mental health”.
It was “unfair” on staff and pupils for “schools to be left to struggle to paper over the cracks left by an unacceptable postcode lottery in early support and mental health treatment”, he said.
He called for the government to invest in counselling services in all schools.
Julie McCulloch, director of policy at the Association of School and College Leaders, said: “Children and young people are facing a tsunami of pressures that affect their health and wellbeing.”
Ms McCulloch added that during the pandemic lockdowns, ”routines and support mechanisms disappeared overnight”.
She said that the government had ”not put anywhere near enough resources into dealing with these problems” and there was an “unfair burden placed on teachers to support children with complex needs that require specialist support”.
Boys happier with teachers
The research into happiness at school also found differences between girls and boys.
Boys were happier with school on average, less likely to report low happiness with school, more motivated to learn and better able to concentrate, the report concludes.
They were also more likely to report belonging in school, feeling safe in school and enjoying coming to school than girls.
Asked to rate out of 10 how happy they were with their relationships with teachers, the average score across all pupils was 7.5, but this was higher for boys.
And boys “were more likely to report that young people in their school got on well together and were less likely to report often feeling lonely throughout 2021-22”, it adds.
The findings also varied according to children’s ethnicity and whether they had special educational needs or disabilities (SEND) and were on free school meals.
For example, SEND pupils were more likely to report low wellbeing than their peers.
And white pupils reported greater “anxiousness” than those from an ethnic-minority background throughout the 2021-22 academic year.
Pupils eligible for free school meals are “less likely to report being motivated to learn”, but report lower concentration and feel less safe at school.
The report points to previous findings that anxiety - among both primary and secondary-age pupils - seemed to increase in the 2021-22 academic year.
In November last year, the Covid Social Mobility and Opportunities (COSMO) study, led jointly by University College London and the Sutton Trust, said that mental health and wellbeing support should be added to pandemic catch-up activities in schools.
It also recommended “ring-fenced” funding for mental health services to support pupils in all schools.
A government spokesperson said: “Children’s levels of happiness and life satisfaction are recovering to where they were before the pandemic, but we understand there is more to be done.
“We want to continue to support all children and young people to be happy, healthy and safe which is why the mandatory school curriculum has a strong focus on mental health to support children’s wellbeing and all eligible state schools and colleges will have access to senior mental health lead training by 2025.
“We have also committed at least £2.3 billion a year into mental health services with the aim that an additional 345,000 children and young people will be able to access NHS-funded mental health support by 2024.”
