The mental health and wellbeing of teachers is being damaged as they are forced to take on more demanding pastoral and emotional challenges, according to a new report.
A survey of over 3,000 teachers and education workers reveals that more than six in 10 (62 per cent) reported offering increased amounts of emotional support to pupils or students since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic.
And the same amount reported that pupil and student behaviour now takes up more time.
Meanwhile, almost half (48 per cent) reported increased pastoral duties to support the welfare of pupils, and more than four in 10 (45 per cent) offer more support to vulnerable pupils and their families.
This, the survey suggests, is taking its toll on staff, with half (50 per cent) of respondents saying they are more likely to be supporting colleagues with their emotional wellbeing since 2020.
The survey was carried out as part of Teaching: the new reality, a report by Education Support, a charity that supports the mental health and wellbeing of teachers and education staff. Education Support commissioned pollsters YouGov to carry out the research in June and July last year.
The charity says that, against the backdrop of a cost-of-living crisis and rising mental health challenges among children and young people, the role of schools and colleges has evolved since 2020 to include a range of emotional and pastoral responsibilities, as well as support for those who are vulnerable.
Education Support’s chief executive Sinéad McBrearty, said that last three years had seen the work of teachers and education staff “changed dramatically”, expanding beyond traditional pastoral care to include a huge range of support for children and young people who cannot access help through “overwhelmed” health or social care services.
“Policymakers need to catch up with this new reality,” she said. “The job that teachers are currently trained for does not match the daily reality of providing emotional and mental health support, resolving family conflict and providing food and clothes. If we continue in this way, we will burn out a generation of talented and dedicated staff. Future generations of children and young people will be even worse hit as the teacher retention and recruitment challenges worsen.”
While teachers and staff are rising to the new challenges, around a third of respondents reported feeling under-prepared for dealing with difficult pupil or student behaviour, for offering emotional support for staff or colleagues, or for supporting vulnerable pupils and their families.
The poll also found that for those who have taken on additional activities, 81 per cent of senior leaders and 70 per cent of school teachers said that it had negatively impacted on their mental health and wellbeing.
This is leaving 83 per cent of all senior leaders, 70 per cent of all school teachers describing themselves as somewhat or very emotionally exhausted, the survey found.
Of those taking on extra responsibilities, one quarter said they now work an additional 4-6 hours per week, and an additional 15 per cent take on an additional 7-10 hours.
An anonymous teacher who recently retired after 32 years in education is quoted in the report as saying: “The job of teaching is completely different to when I started my career. The stress and emotional toll of constant worry and care is huge. It’s hard to switch off from that.”
Education Support says the findings paint a picture of an education system and wider public services that are struggling to meet the needs of children and young people, and therefore limiting their life chances.
It calls on policymakers to “decide whether schools are the front line of children’s services, or whether they are specialists in education”.
“If we cannot provide this level of clarity, we should plan for increased attrition from the profession and even lower recruitment into ITT,” it warns. The charity also calls for better-resourced services for children and families and for retention strategies to be revisited in light of the findings.
A report last year found teachers were increasingly stepping in to help pupils with non-academic matters - for example, by buying them food and even washing their clothes.
Today’s findings chime with what the Association of School and College Leaders hears from school and college leaders, according to general secretary Geoff Barton.
He said: “The capacity of local services to provide support to children has reduced over the past decade, leaving teachers and leaders to fill the void on top of all their other duties and with inadequate government funding.
“The role of school and college staff now extends far beyond the classroom. They have become a de facto and unofficial branch of social and healthcare services without the training, capacity or resources to discharge such responsibilities. It places them under intolerable workload and stress, and this situation is not nearly good enough for children and young people who need dedicated and specialist support.”
The government must review what it expects of schools and colleges, what it expects of other support services, and how it is going to ensure that the appropriate training, funding and personnel are in place, he added.
These findings include that 65 per cent of teachers and 71 per cent of senior leaders feel little or no support is offered to their pupils by other public bodies such as social services, child and adolescent mental health services (Camhs) and the NHS.
Paul Whiteman, general secretary of the NAHT school leaders’ union, said that as a result of cuts to vital support services, “school leaders and their staff increasingly end up acting as teachers, social workers and counsellors rolled into one,” as they struggle to help families access stretched, under-funded provision like Camhs.
“Due to the lack of specialist support available, school staff are too often left feeling helpless, drained and overworked, which in turn only serves the fuel the recruitment and retention crisis in education. We cannot continue to expect school staff to continue to step in and fill the gaps created by the chronic underfunding of these vital services. Nor can we continue to ask them to sacrifice their own wellbeing in order to sustain the current system. As this report clearly shows, to do so would not only be unfair on them, it would be unfair on pupils too.”
The Department for Education has been approached for comment.
