Almost a third of state school A-level students say their school’s support for mental health is not good enough, a study suggests.
It also says state school students are twice as likely to feel negatively about their school’s support for mental health than private school students, according to a joint study from University College London and the Sutton Trust.
The Covid Social Mobility and Opportunities (Cosmo) study is based on 13,000 students who were in Year 10 when the Covid pandemic first hit.
It finds that 32 per cent of Year 13s in state schools do not feel their school’s support for mental health is good enough, compared with 16 per cent of those attending private schools.
The findings follow warnings from school leaders earlier this year that they are being left to deal with a “tsunami of pressures” hitting pupils’ wellbeing post-pandemic.
School leaders say today’s findings show that mental health support services need to be far better resourced.
The study has been tracking the lives of a cohort of thousands of young people in England who took A-level exams and equivalent qualifications this summer.
More than 11,000 students in Year 13 (aged 17-18) were surveyed between October 2022 and February 2023 as part of the research.
Overall, a quarter of Year 13 students had sought some mental health support over the past year but many were struggling to access services.
The study reveals that support was most commonly sought from school/college counsellors or other school/college support services (12 per cent).
The government has introduced schemes to boost student mental health, such as increasing the number of mental health support teams.
But, as Tes reported earlier this year, the scheme was found to be struggling to retain staff due to the “emotional intensity” of the work, along with a high workload and sense of frustration with the approach and scope of the work.
A recent survey by the NEU teaching union found that eight in 10 teachers felt workload was a barrier to supporting pupil and student mental health in their setting.
Mental health support needed
The study also reveals that 39 per cent of current Year 13s in the most deprived parts of the country say they are still waiting or have not received the support they applied for, compared with 28 per cent of those in the most affluent areas.
More than two in five (44 per cent) of Year 13 students could be classified as experiencing high psychological distress, the study suggests.
Meanwhile, just over a third (33 per cent) of young people said that the Covid pandemic was still having a negative impact on their education.
The report states that there is a ”clear need for sustainable and well-funded support for young people experiencing mental health issues, including preventative and early intervention services to prevent future cohorts from experiencing such issues”.
‘No quick fix’
Jake Anders, associate professor and deputy director of UCL Centre for Education Policy and Equalising Opportunities, said the findings showed society was “not doing enough” to tackle the crisis in young people’s mental health.
He said: “It is vital that we properly resource mental health services across the country. There is no quick, cheap fix to achieving that.”
Geoff Barton, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, said that the high rates of poor mental health among young people is the “legacy of...the pandemic” and “also the impact of the ongoing cost-of-living crisis on families”.
He said that even before the “surge in demand, specialist mental health services in many areas were unable to cope”.
Specialist treatment
Mr Barton added that it was of the ”utmost importance that more resources are put into mental health support services for young people, that those who require specialist treatment receive that treatment immediately, and that the government tackles the very high rate of child poverty in the UK”.
“None of this should really need saying and yet we seem to be in a situation of having said this repeatedly for years without this action being taken,” he said.
A government spokesperson said: “Through the NHS Long Term Plan, we are investing an extra £2.3 billion a year by March 2024 for mental health services, meaning an additional 345,000 children and young people will be able to access NHS-funded mental health support.”
Coverage of mental health support teams in schools and colleges was being extended to “at least 50 per cent of pupils in England by the end of March 2025”, the spokesperson said.
