The government should focus on improving support for pupils’ transition from primary to secondary school as a way of protecting children’s wellbeing, according to a new report published today.
The report also calls on ministers to look into addressing a widening wellbeing gap between girls and boys in schools and into sixth forms.
These recommendations come in an analysis from The Children’s Society, which warns that around one in seven Year 10 students reported low levels of wellbeing.
The report says this figure is worse than for other year groups in secondary education but it reflects a “broader issue that extends throughout the secondary school years...where students never quite regain the happiness levels of their primary school days”.
The charity’s findings, based on responses to its annual household surveys conducted in 2022 and 2023, suggest that 14.7 per cent of students have low wellbeing in Year 12, and 12.7 per cent in Year 11.
The analysis focuses on comparing the wellbeing scores of children and young people in England and Wales in school years 6 and 7, 9 and 10, and 11 and 12, which represent key educational transition points.
Protecting student wellbeing in schools
The report warns that there is a stark disparity between girls’ and boys’ wellbeing.
Compared with their male peers, girls in Year 9 and Year 12 have lower average happiness with school, their “relationships with friends”, their “use of time”, and “what may happen to them in the future”.
Year 7 and Year 12 are specific times in a girl’s school journey when they score particularly low for wellbeing.
The Children’s Society calls for a greater government policy focus on these moments of transition to address the wider issue of girls’ wellbeing.
In a series of policy recommendations, the charity says that there needs to be more emphasis on “embedding the wellbeing of children and young people across school guidance, legislation and requirements”.
It also recommends a universal measurement of children’s wellbeing, which could be used to survey children to “inform policy and practice at a national and local level”.
While the charity says it welcomes initiatives such as mental health support teams in schools, it adds that these schemes must be “universal” and “occur within a wider culture focused on children’s wellbeing”.
The existing mental health support teams scheme was revealed to cover less than two-fifths of primary school pupils.
In its manifesto, Labour committed to providing access to specialist mental health professionals in every state school.
Schools and school leaders must be assisted to deliver a more “wellbeing-integrated, transition-focused level of support”, the report says, including support with “necessary resource”, “guidance” and “capacity”.
But the report acknowledges that more needs to be done beyond schools. “There remains an ongoing requirement for a whole-society, cross-governmental focus on reversing the decline in children’s wellbeing,” it adds.
The Department for Education has been contacted for comment.
For the latest education news and analysis delivered directly to your inbox every weekday morning, sign up to the Tes Daily newsletter
