That this House takes note of the role of schools in caring for the mental health and well-being of pupils, and assisting in their development as community and family members.
My Lords, I begin by thanking the Library for the excellent briefing setting out the problem. A standout statistic in that briefing about the truly terrible state of the mental health of school pupils was that in November 2023 NHS Digital estimated that 20% of eight to 16 year-olds had a probable mental health disorder.
I thank the significant number of NGOs and campaign groups that sent briefings for the debate. I pick out particularly Square Peg, an organisation established by and for those with lived experience of school attendance difficulties. It works in partnership with Not Fine in School. Its existence since 2018 demonstrates how the issue we are discussing pre-dates the Covid pandemic, while acknowledging that it has undoubtedly magnified issues for pupils, parents and schools. Absence rates were rising by 15% to 20% per annum pre pandemic, while exclusion and suspension rates, off-rolling and de-registrations were also increasing.
I thank very much the noble Lords who signed up for this last item of business on a Thursday. This is an acknowledgement of the concern about this issue and the desire to examine not just treatment but causes. I look forward to all noble Lords’ contributions.
The origins of this debate lie in alarm following the report, in November 2023, by the Children’s Commissioner for England. The report found that pupil absence had become endemic at key stage 4, with over one-third of pupils either persistently or severely absent for at least one year. But from both the largest parties in our politics, discussion and debate about those figures has, I am afraid, focused on what is wrong with pupils or parents. The Government have launched a national communications campaign called Moments Matter, Attendance Counts, which targets parents and carers, trying to get through to them the importance of attendance for attainment, well-being and development.
That seems to ignore the fact that a survey by the youth mental health charity stem4 found that 28% of 12 to 18 year-olds had not attended school over the last year due to anxiety about the experience of attendance. Experts comment that many of them are unable to cope with the school experience, and the “prosecuting parents” report reflects that threatening legal action against parents, as often happens, is both pointless and damaging. But, all too often, that continues to be the response. What does it do to a parent-child relationship if the parent or carer is being pressured by the Government to force the child to go to school, even when school is making the child ill? The top Labour response was that it would legislate for a compulsory national register of home-schooled children, who are not, of course, the source of the attendance issue.
Rather than focusing on pupils or parents, the Green Party and I want to focus on what is happening in our schools. What are they doing to push away pupils—particularly, but far from only, those from disadvantaged backgrounds and with special educational needs, disabilities and chronic illnesses, including long Covid—and discourage their attendance? Why are they failing to be attracted to school?
My Lords, all of us today appreciate that the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, managed to achieve this debate, which we all welcome hugely; I thank her. I do not consider anything that we talk about today to be party politics; it is much more important than that. My friend, the noble Lord, Lord Touhig, has spent years, indeed decades, debating how we can hasten the methods for helping this group of people. I must also say that I have been helped for this debate by Professor Vivian Hill of University College London, who is the past chair of the British Psychological Society’s Division of Educational and Child Psychology. We worked together for many years because my grandson is autistic, although that is not the only reason; it was much wider than just my grandson.
While schools can, and do, play a significant role in supporting the mental health and well-being of all their pupils, head teachers have a significant role in delivering the culture and ethos of their schools. They face a significant increase in the number of pupils requiring support, and they can face significant challenges when working with pupils with more severe and complex needs, in particular those with special educational needs, including autism and dyslexia. To support these pupils and their families, they would require access to more specialist professional support services, such as educational psychologists and child and adolescent mental health services, although this support is increasingly rare.
I will elaborate on the nature of the challenge. There is a great deal of evidence on increasing mental health needs in children and young people. NHS data from 2021 suggests that the rates of probable mental disorders have increased since 2017, reporting an increase from 11.6% in 2017 to 17.4% in 2021, which reflects a change from one in nine to one in six children aged six to 16, and the data indicates a similar increase in 17 to 19 year-olds. The Children’s Society Good Childhood Report 2022 indicates that, in the past three years, the likelihood of young people having a mental health problem has increased by some 50%, suggesting that five children in a classroom of 30 are now likely to have mental health problems. Access to overstretched specialist services such as child and adolescent mental health teams is extremely problematical, with 34% of those pupils referred to NHS services not accepted into treatment or placed on waiting lists of one to three years. We know that in the region of 50% of mental health problems start by age 14, and early proactive and preventive support is critical and may significantly reduce longer-term needs for the individual and longer-term costs for society; it is a problem that cannot be ignored.
My Lords, I too welcome the opportunity to have a debate on this important area. We are at the start of a very long journey in trying to find the appropriate answers.
I am not as pessimistic as the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, about the state of schools. I often find them happy places. Not all is well and things could be better, but there are not 24,000 miserable institutions throughout the country. For many of our children, school is the only place where their well-being is protected; they are emotionally stronger, more stable and happier because they go to school every day. However, I absolutely accept that that is not true for everyone, and every child matters. We must do as much as we can to support those children who are falling off the edge.
I wondered why I never discussed issues such as this during my 18 years of teaching. There are probably two reasons why it was not on our agenda way back then. First, we are now more aware that children can have mental health problems and medical science means that we have done more to diagnose them. Secondly, I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, that the pressure has increased, and we need to look at that. The question is whether the schools are the cause of that deterioration of well-being and whether they are equipped to support children when the pressures come from outside. How much is it the schools’ fault and how much can they do to help when pressure comes from elsewhere?
I believe that children should be encouraged to do well in examinations. I am glad that I got mine. They gave me my life chances and every statistic shows that children who do not do so have worse opportunities. I have never apologised for any teacher or politician whose policies intend to narrow that divide between children who succeed in exams at school and those who do not. However, it is legitimate to ask what the cost of that has been in the way that we structure our schools. That is what I want to concentrate on. There has been a cost and we can do something about it, but we need to be honest and open and think very carefully.
My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, for bringing this important debate before the House, and those who are speaking today.
Improving the mental health and well-being of our children in school is one of the most important issues, and all of us must work on it together. In the early years, a good experience of education and the ability to learn, grow and develop in a safe and secure environment are essential to success in future life. Our children need to be resilient. Good mental health is a prerequisite to learning, as it is to good attendance at school. An ill child is no more capable of learning than a cheese grater is of being a glass of water. Our schools must be warm, welcoming, adaptable and inclusive spaces. Schools are ideal settings for providing our children with mental health support.
In a previous debate, the noble Baroness, Lady Hollins, put it very well:
“Thinking about a child’s school environment, we need to develop a culture of nurture as the foundation for learning”.—[Official Report, 23/11/23; col. 837.]
We need proper funding and resources and a whole-school approach. First and foremost, we must deal with the immediate crisis.
I held my own debate in November on the current state of mental health support for children and young people in England. I declared my personal interest as a parent of a child who has gone through long periods of poor mental health, saying that it was one of the most challenging periods of my life and that no parent ever wants to see their child unable to keep themselves safe. My knowledge and experience in these matters is as a parent.
The scale of the mental health problem is huge; it disproportionately affects those in poverty and is made worse by the lack of resources available to resolve it. The most recent key findings from the NHS digital survey show that one in five of our young people aged eight to 25 had a probable mental health disorder. Rates remain at elevated levels following the pandemic, and among 17 to 25 year-olds, rates were twice as high for young women as they were for young men. We are treating double the number than before the pandemic of children and young people with eating disorders who need urgent care. We have huge waits for services, with treatment for even immediate and urgent cases often, in effect, being denied. We face a children’s and young person’s mental health emergency, and we must all work together to end the wait. The House spoke clearly with one urgent voice on the issues, and I think it will do so again today.
My Lords, it is a pleasure to speak in this debate and I pay tribute to the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, for focusing her seemingly inexhaustible energies on this important topic. It is a complex topic that invites multiple approaches. I intend to focus narrowly on one area, and, given that intended focus, I must start by declaring my interests as noted in the register. Of particular relevance to this debate is my role as chair of an expert advisory panel convened by government to offer non-binding advice to the DCMS and DfE on the development of their plan for cultural education.
My own education was far from usual in that I entered professional training at the age of 11 as a student at the Royal Ballet School. I will always count myself fortunate to have been educated in a place where there was never any sense that art was an extra, a “nice to have”, or peripheral to the main purpose. Art and arts-based approaches were integrated throughout a broad-based education that would equip us with a set of skills as important in life as they are in dance: curiosity, courage, perseverance, confidence, teamwork, personal responsibility and a creative hinterland on which to draw. Over the years, my increasing awareness of just how effectively that arts-enriched education prepared me for life beyond the stage has inspired an ongoing quest to better understand the role of the arts, culture and creativity in personal and social development, educational attainment, and health and well-being.
It is a field of research that has blossomed over recent decades. In 2016, the AHRC published a landmark report, Understanding the Value of Arts & Culture, which analysed, among other things, how arts engagement contributes to community cohesion, civic engagement and educational attainment. Three years later, the World Health Organization published the largest report to date on the underlying evidence base for the contribution of arts and culture to health and well-being. Of particular relevance to this debate is that the report found strong evidence of a positive correlation between arts engagement and the social determinants of health, child development and healthy behaviours.
My Lords, I extend my gratitude to the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, for initiating this vital debate, and declare my interests as a parent of home-educated and state-educated children and as a board member of an organisation committed to providing private education.
We are at a critical juncture, where the mental health challenges facing our youth have intensified—notably since the pandemic, as others have pointed out. Just this month, the Royal College of Psychiatrists said that there had been a 53% increase in the number of children in mental health crisis over the last four years. This situation is exacerbated by a schooling environment in which most GCSEs are now tested in exams only. This, coupled with limited resources, has severely hampered schools’ ability to support effectively those with neurodiversity and SEND, as well as other pupils struggling generally with mental health challenges.
It is heartening to see the Government’s introduction of mental health support teams and the provision of funding for training leads. This is a commendable step towards embedding mental health support within our educational framework. However, the reach of these initiatives needs expansion, given that eventually it will still only be available to half of all schools, and all schools are still limited in the degree that they can help children with particularly acute needs. It is essential that this support becomes a staple across all schools, ensuring that no child is left without the necessary mental health resources that they need at whatever intensity of need they have. I of course pay tribute to the many schools and teachers who do such a great job in spite of all this, helping where they can.
I will now focus my remarks on the school pathways for parents and children dealing with mental health episodes which, from those I have spoken to and interacted with, are too often confusing, complex and traumatic. This comes on top of the high levels of stress families feel because of the issues they have to deal with and, sometimes, the bullying that accompanies them. The pathways need clarification and simplification; they need to become more collaborative rather than confrontational, offering support rather than exacerbating stress and anxiety.
My Lords, I join colleagues in thanking the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, for securing this debate. It is important and helpful to discuss these matters.
Earlier this month, many organisations sought to raise the profile of children’s mental health during Children’s Mental Health Week. The charity Place2Be took the theme “My Voice Matters” and used the opportunity to urge the Government to give children and young people the support, tools and confidence that they need—confidence to be proud of themselves but, more, confidence to believe in themselves. I have always thought that believing in oneself is the beginning of self-confidence. I have known cases where a lack of confidence among young schoolchildren in particular has been put down to shyness. It is thought of simply as something that will pass in time, but it often hides other problems. In quite a few cases, the underlying problem, left unrecognised, can lead to many crises in later life.
This is why mental health support should start early on in a child’s life, at school. For so many children, school is the first time in their lives that they have been apart from the home and family environment, and the first time that they have spent a whole day with other children and adults who they do not know. A quarter of a million children in the UK are believed to have mental health problems. We face a major challenge in ensuring that they receive the support needed to enjoy the quality of life that those of us in this Chamber would take for granted.
Many are denied help by a National Health Service that is struggling to manage surging caseloads against a backdrop of a crisis in child mental health. Some health trusts in our country are failing to offer treatment to up to 60% of those referred by GPs. Health service figures released last November show that one in five children and young people in England have a probable mental health condition. Surely the time to begin supporting these young people is when they begin at school.
My Lords, I too am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, for sponsoring this debate on a matter of great importance for the future life of our nation, and for the challenging sensitivity to the issues that she laid out for us in her introduction.
Church of England schools now educate just over 1 million children—around 20% of the country’s education provision. The Church’s current Vision for Education, published in 2016, is for an education system that promotes
“life in all its fullness”,
a phrase used by Jesus Christ in St John’s Gospel, and invites a wholistic approach to education, considering the material, cultural, social and spiritual dimensions of human existence and the wisdom with which we use the gifts God has given us.
In the diocese of Chichester, where I serve, our schools serve the many coastal towns of Sussex, with their distinctive blend of tourism and deep deprivation, as well as extensive rural areas, where small village schools play a vital role in the way that the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, identified. We in Chichester will not be alone in forging partnerships in our Church schools with NHS mental health support teams. I pay tribute to their importance. It has enabled us to develop home-school-church networks, building vital work where the life of school and the life of home interact. It also makes it possible to find better ways to support children who suffer with their mental health.
This NHS partnership has also opened up another partnership through a diocesan multi-academy trust that is working with the University of Sussex to assess the impact of the Covid pandemic. Among the things emerging from that are questions about the impact that working from home might be having on children’s attendance at school. It also looks at the impact of social media, which expanded for many children during lockdown, and asks questions about the extent to which cell phone use, for example, now might need to be more carefully restricted in schools.
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There is a whole other issue about the rising levels of poverty and child poverty, which were addressed in the powerful earlier debate today. That is obviously a major contributor. Our society is dysfunctional and is failing many, particularly the young. But I will keep the focus today within schools. There is also a big issue of underfunding, but I will not focus on that today because it descends so easily into a pointless duel of statistics.
I stress that I am not blaming hard-working heads, teachers and other staff, who operate within a system forced on them, one that has been ideologically driven, over the course of Governments of different hues, to focus on discipline, rigid frameworks, teaching to the test, regimented and tightly controlled behaviour, and so-called preparation for work. Of course, I have to mention dealing with the impacts of austerity, which saw the most deprived one-fifth of secondary schools’ spending per pupil fall by 12% in real terms between 2010 and 2021. As a former school governor, I saw the pressure that heads and teachers were under to conform, to test and to push square pegs into round holes.
The spread of multi-academy trust schools, independent of local democratic control—with schools not infrequently forced, rather than choosing, to join—has been associated with models of rigid discipline and heavy penalties for the slightest infraction: not having a pen, speaking in a corridor or having the wrong hairdo. A former teacher described it as “institutional bullying”. These schools are concentrated in more economically deprived, often so-called levelling-up, areas. A mother shared with me on social media her child’s response to the suggestion that school was preparing them for society. The child said, “But the only place in society that is like school is a prison”. Out of the mouths of babes come some terribly clear truths.
One of the things that I want to reflect on goes back in history, and how little schools have changed in the past century. If you set aside the technology of whiteboards and personal tablets then the structure, system and perceived purpose of schools is essentially unchanged. The subjects taught and favoured, the external exams and classes, with dozens of pupils of the same age all proceeding together, the idea that this is to prepare pupils for the workplace and the focus on discipline, uniform and conformity—all this would be entirely familiar to a Victorian student, and to what use is the technology put? In initiating discussions about this debate, I learned that in many schools an app records a pupil’s demerits—how many black marks they have earned that day—which are also conveyed electronically to parents, to show how much time pupils are supposed to spend in detention. What does it do to your mental health to know that when your phone vibrates, you have another black mark, another perceived failure, another punishment?
The Autistic Girls Network shared with me research from 2023, showing that 94% of school attendance cases were underpinned by significant emotional distress. Some 92% of those children were neurodivergent and 83% were autistic. However, as the network pointed out, 80% of autistic girls remain unrecognised at the age of 18, so the numbers will be even higher than that. There is no doubt that children with special educational needs and disabilities are being severely failed by the current system. That issue, I am pleased to say, is often raised in your Lordships’ House, and I am confident when I look at the speakers’ list that others in this debate will focus on it. I shall focus on the fact that many pupils, particularly those who start with advantages in family background, health and well-being, may survive the experience of school—they may not show up in the absence statistics or with mental health states sufficient to appear in the medical figures—but we should want and expect much more from schools than being something to survive and endure.
I focus on the rise in discipline, rules and controls over every aspect of pupils’ bodies within the school gates, but there is also the question of what has disappeared from schools, particularly over recent years. I discussed this debate with Rick Page, ex-head teacher of Wordsworth Primary School in Southampton, a large inner-city school of 630 children. Over a number of years, when he was head, he developed a five-strand creative child programme; a music department that sent an orchestra to play at the Royal Albert Hall with the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra; a sports coach team with an office on site and an extensive curriculum, plus after-school and holiday clubs; an environmental studies and forest schoolteacher, teaching in a nature zone; a dance teacher for tackling ballet and to lead the Rock Challenge; and an arts focus, which included a talented artists scheme with a neighbouring public school, the King Edward VI School. Mr Page told me that attendance, attitude and behaviour were all improved by fostering a real connection with children’s lives and the local community. Since he retired, continual real-terms budget cuts and the straitjacket of conformity imposed on schools by Ofsted have seen many significant parts of that lost. That is one school example, but the reality of many.
I want to introduce a final theme: the content of education offered in schools, which, as I said earlier, has changed little since Victorian times. This comment was inspired by hearing Nehaal Bajwa, the vice-president for liberation and equality at the National Union of Students, speaking last night and reflecting on how the system provides education throughout in how our economy, society and environment are broken, but fails to provide solutions on how to fix it. We really ought to think about how we provide pupils with the ability to deal with the many challenges that they face in our society—challenges that our generation has bequeathed to them. I would add that we have schools that are preparing pupils to be cogs in the existing economic system, a fate against which many pupils are rebelling. There is an idea that education is for exams and jobs, when it needs to be a complete preparation for life in a fast-changing world, living as citizens, neighbours and family and household members, and as consumers in and contributors to society in multiple ways.
How will we tackle the climate emergency and nature crisis, the poverty and inequality of the world and the geopolitical turmoil? The climate strikers showed us that school pupils are fully engaged with those things, but how are schools helping them to do that? What I heard from being out with and talking to those climate strikers was that they felt that schools were failing them. Indeed, a number said to me that they had teachers ask them to explain the climate emergency, because the teachers themselves did not feel that they had the framework to understand it.
What does the rigid behavioural indoctrination prepare pupils for? Perhaps behaving with the efficiency of a robot in an Amazon warehouse, or following the script in a call centre. WB Yeats said that education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire. Yet, all too often, what we have in the current system is filling school pupils with anxiety and fear; with test answers and rigid routines, rather than a love of learning and the capacity to discover and innovate; with the problems of the adult world, but not the sense that they can take control and join with others to solve them.
I like to provide solutions, so I will finish with a final stream of thought that may be the most radical part of this speech. How do we fix all this? One part of my answer is that it starts with democracy. We need to restore democratic control over schools and remove the dead centralising hand of Westminster; more than that, we need to make schools more democratic. Psychologists tell us that to be empowered and be in control of your own life and your own body is crucial to well-being. It is a central part of good mental health. That is as true for children as it is for adults.
So, what do we need? We are talking about health and well-being, helping pupils to step out into a difficult world with so many challenges, equipped to live good, healthy, productive lives. We need schools that are more democratic and more compassionate, caring and forgiving. If a child forgot a pen or did not get exactly the right uniform on that morning, how much should that child pay for that? What is the cost of penalising that child heavily? They need to be more accepting of difference, more embedded in and reflective of their communities, not reflective of the will of Westminster. They need to be far richer in art, culture, physical activity and play. That is the sort of schools that we need to care for the mental health and well-being of our future generations, to send them out into the world for a healthy, fulfilling and productive life.
The limited access to specialist support or professional guidance for schools and families leaves them struggling to manage complex mental health needs that require the knowledge and skills of specialist support services, and by this, I mean educational psychologists and CAMHS. There are huge variations in access to this type of support in different parts of the country and some areas have little or no access to these services. The money the DfE is investing in the new training contract for educational psychologists is very welcome. However, the numbers who are to be trained are critically short of meeting the current and future demands.
The recent Department for Education report on the EP workforce in 2023 revealed: 88% of local authorities reporting difficulties in recruiting educational psychologists; one-third of local authorities reporting difficulties with the retention of educational psychologists; and 96% of the local authorities reporting recruitment and/or retention issues stated that these difficulties have critically affected young people reaching their full potential. This month, the recent comments from the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman have noted with consternation that the foreseeable educational psychology workforce capacity issues have been decades in the making and the impact that has had on young people’s timely access to education, health and care needs assessments, as well as early intervention and preventive work, puts many of these children and young people, their schools and families at risk of avoidable poor outcomes.
In summary, if schools are to care adequately for the mental health and well-being of all their pupils, in particular those with SEN, they will require access to specialist support from educational psychologists and better access to CAMHS. Access to these services will help schools respond to and meet these needs and help prevent pupils’ needs escalating, at great detriment to the child and their family and at huge cost to society. My noble friend the Minister has over many years devoted a great deal of her time to addressing and hastening change. I know that she cares most deeply for these very special people, many of whom contribute so much to the arts, sciences and original thinking.
The problem is not the higher expectations for all children to do well in their exams but the levers we use to try to bring that about. We have undoubtedly made these exams so high-pressured and high-risk that they create an environment in schools, from the head to the teachers to the parents and then trickling down to the children, whereby if you do not succeed, you are in trouble and a failure. That is a problem.
I always remember a young child who had not done as well in their exams as they thought they would saying to me, “Estelle, does that mean that I’m not any good and won’t be able to get a job?” It was very difficult in that moment to say, “Of course you can, everyone fails and you learn from it”, because the whole pressure prior to that had been to say, “If you don’t work hard, you won’t get a job, and success is doing A, B or C”. Those messages we give children are really important. You need your exams and should do as well as you can, but it is not the end of the world and you are not a worse person if you do not do as well as you might.
The second issue on which I agree very much with the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, is that there is no doubt that two things have happened. Things that can aid well-being—art, creativity, sport, time to think and space to talk, time to build good relationships—have been squeezed out of schools. Even where they have not, teachers do not think they are valued. Both those things are a huge problem. There are teachers who are trying to do those things; I see so much wonderful creativity in the arts in schools. You scratch your head and think, “I thought all of that was gone”. It is not valued, and because people think that government and others do not value it, that becomes a problem. There is more to be done, but I would not want to go back to the glory days when the division between the successes and failures was very much based on sex discrimination and social class discrimination.
Schools themselves can support children who may have mental health issues arising from pressures outside school, such as social media, drugs, fragmented communities, or families who do not have the skills to help them. Schools are absolutely key in this. They are the places where most children go and where trust is greatest—probably after child medical services.
We also need to address whether schools have the workforce to deliver on that task. There is so much more that could be done. If you look at the staffing of any school, you will probably find that almost all—but not all—the staff are employed to bring about academic progress and success. We need a better balance and skillset within schools. I would like to visit schools and find that, in addition to teachers whose job it is to get children through exams, there are also people with the time to talk about spiritual things, for example, to work magic, to take the kids out. We need people with skills and qualifications in mental health—not necessarily highly qualified psychologists, but people whose job it is to do early intervention and give early support for young children.
That is where the problem lies. Years and years ago, schools were part of their communities. All families, especially in village communities, sent their children to their local school, which often neighboured the church. It was a tight community where everyone knew what was going on. Whatever you think about it, parental choice and a move to doing better means that this community built around a school has broken down. However, it does not mean that we cannot use the school as a base and a community for the people it serves. It just means that we need to do it in a very different way.
I finish by acknowledging the work the Government have done on mental health support teams. They have not done anywhere near enough on the curriculum—PSHE and citizenship, for example—but that is for another day. I like the mental health support teams, and I declare an interest, in that I am involved with the Birmingham Education Partnership, which is in charge of managing and promoting some of these. However, I worry that they might be seen as a substitute for people who have slogged for years to gain well-earned qualifications. Progress really is too slow. We are covering only 35% of pupils, six years after the start of the initiative. It needs to be done better and faster. It would be helpful if the Minister could tell us when this might be rolled out nationally.
I have called on the Government to accelerate the rollout of mental health support hubs to all schools and colleges nationwide. That is the quickest and most effective form of help. I asked the Government to commit to bringing forward their target of 50% access by 2024-25 and making it 100%. Munira Wilson in the other place has introduced a Private Member’s Bill on this issue, and I am delighted that my party has put forward proposals for dedicated mental health professionals in all state-funded schools and to pay for that through a trebling of the digital services tax. Place2Be has calculated that every £1 invested in primary schools-based mental health provision will generate £8 in economic and social benefits.
The response from the Minister at the time of my last debate was positive; however, since then, nothing has happened. I kindly ask her why there has been no movement from the Government on these issues? The urgency and need is clear and the cost is not great, so are there practical problems with accelerating the policy? Is it about not being able to find and train staff in time, or are there other practical matters?
I will briefly say a few words about long-term persistent absence. When my child was ill, she was off school for prolonged periods and had a very poor attendance record during others. I know what it is like, and just how challenging it can be, when your child is not well enough keep themselves safe, let alone attend school. I know the struggle of trying to get them out of bed every morning. I also understand how we got in this position: Covid caused an explosion in mental health issues, and we need to understand better why that was. It shows that our children are lacking the resilience they so desperately need.
As a result of the increase in poor mental health and the lack of available treatment, absence rates invariably rose, and the Government and schools, rightly, wanted to bring those back down. However, my personal perception is that they went too far. Fining parents should be an absolute last resort. The parent of any child who is waiting for treatment for mental health issues or is unable to get a diagnosis for autism or other special needs should not face those fines. There needs to be far more co-operation between schools and parents in trying to get children who are suffering back to school. The Children’s Commissioner has also pointed out this problem, calling it
“the issue of our time”.
Like me, she is calling for the Government to accelerate the rollout of mental health hubs.
Although the causes of persistent absence from school are complex, one key factor is the lack of mental health support and I would like to ask the Minister about the connection with the numbers of children who have been waiting over a month for CAMHS. Do the Government keep statistics, cross-referencing them for children who are waiting for treatment against children who are also long-term persistently absent from school? It is important that the Government cross-reference those two groups so they can better understand whether a denial of treatment for mental ill-health is one of the key drivers of long-term persistent absence from school.
Finally, I call on the Government again to please take more urgent action on these matters. I recognise the progress made and the actions taken, but more needs to be done urgently to protect our children and young people.
Alongside evidence that childhood engagement in arts activities can predict academic performance across the school years, the report’s authors also found that it promotes pro-social classroom and playground behaviour, enhances emotional competence and reduces bullying. The behavioural benefits are shown to extend to groups with diverse needs. Children from less advantaged backgrounds, those with social, emotional and behavioural difficulties and those with physical or learning disabilities experienced reductions in anxiety, depression or aggression, with associated improvements in self-esteem, confidence, communication and personal empowerment. The authors also report a sizeable literature on the arts’ role in building social and community capital, fostering co-operation across different cultures, reducing prejudice, enhancing social consciousness and increasing civic behaviours such as voting and volunteering.
Dr Daisy Fancourt, one of the authors of the report, has worked forensically over many years to investigate the ways in which these outcomes occur: how the component elements of arts activities trigger psychological, physiological, social and behavioural responses that are themselves causally linked with positive health and well-being outcomes. In addressing the question that the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, has introduced today, it is worth considering each of these in turn.
Fancourt’s work points to how the aesthetic and emotional components of art provide opportunities for understanding and exploring emotions. They allow opportunities for emotional regulation and stress reduction, and all these are key to how we manage mental health. The cognitive stimulation in art supports learning and skills development, which is beneficial in itself but is also interrelated with mental illnesses such as depression. Group interactions through arts activities improve social capital and reduce prejudice and discrimination between different groups. The physicality of arts activities reduces sedentary behaviours, improving fitness, flexibility and bone health and linking to reductions in depression. This is what the research tells us.
Schools taking part in the Artsmark programme show us what this looks like in action. Artsmark offers schools a framework and support to embed creativity across the curriculum, addressing school improvement priorities, and 89% of Artsmark schools report improvements in pupils’ well-being and resilience. They point to positive impacts on mental health, enhanced intercultural understanding and stronger connections forged between staff, pupils, families and local communities. Schools also report improvements in punctuality, student engagement and attendance, underlining the important point noted earlier by the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, about creating environments that encourage children and their parents to engage with school.
Partnership working is key to success and, in the best-case scenarios, a network of commissioners, providers and agencies across education, culture, voluntary and faith sectors, as well as local authorities, work together to provide children with rich, culturally diverse and locally connected arts opportunities. I urge the Minister to follow the progress of Culture Start, a three-year city-based cross-sector partnership launching this year in Sunderland, which will span social housing and the voluntary, cultural and youth sectors, as well as education, to provide young people with cultural experiences that help to mitigate some of the impacts of growing up in poverty.
Research and lived experience demonstrate how arts activities and experiences can support schools in caring for the mental health and well-being of children and in fostering family and community connections. The evidence is clear, the outcomes evident. There are, of course, other routes for children to access arts activities, at home and in the community, but if we want all children to enjoy the developmental, educational and social benefits associated with arts engagement, school—a universal experience—is surely the best route to ensuring universal access.
I know that, in responding, the Minister will reiterate her commitment to ensuring that all children have access to these opportunities through education. I will finish by welcoming that commitment in advance.
Too often, parents find that the imperative schools have to keep children in school and perform in and for exams, and to manage limited resources and attention to get the bulk of their pupils moving forwards, conflicts with the individualised and tailored attention and support needed by pupils facing mental health challenges. In a number of cases, parents decide to remove their children from a school environment which is not sufficiently supportive, which the child refuses to go to or in which they face bullying.
At this point, the parents face a number of hurdles: attempts can often be made to keep the child in school attendance, even if it might not be in the child’s best interests or aid their well-being, so that the school, trust and local authority can maintain their targets, sometimes with the threat of prosecution or fines. The family can often feel mistreated, like criminals.
I find that, in such scenarios, many families currently see home education as their only escape from such a system that does not adequately cater to their needs. It seems to them the only legal way to move forwards without harassment, short of moving house to another locality. This choice, often made in desperation, should prompt us to reflect on how we can make even more of our schools more neuro-inclusive and supportive environments, rather than ones that have to enforce rules that may not apply or be particularly helpful in such circumstances.
I am also saddened that, rather than dealing with the causes of such absences and the growth of home education as a result of this crisis, the Government and other stakeholders are considering implementing registers for out-of-school children. This would add further stress to families who have chosen to go down that route. It would be wiser to sort out the lack of support and empathy when families have to endure mental health and special needs challenges in schools, signpost multiple paths including, but not just, home education to provide temporary respite and formulate a plan, which may or may not involve the former school, and provide advice, support and training if home education is the chosen path, rather than to create a situation where those who have taken their children out of school are automatically assumed to be criminal or are suspected of neglect or any number of crimes. For many, their only desire is ultimately to see their child well, succeed and be restored.
In closing, I will pose a number of critical questions to the Minister. First, will there be an investigation into the reliance on home education as the only legitimate escape route for parents seeking to protect their children from a system that can sometimes feel to them adversarial, and work done to clarify the pathways out of an unsustainable school environment, so that they are more supportive and do not suspect the parents or child as a first resort?
Secondly, in light of the recent trends in school attendance and the unique challenges post Covid—they look like a result of Covid at the moment, given that attendance is now rising again—is there a plan for an emergency support package specifically targeted at the student cohorts most affected from 2020 onwards?
Thirdly, what support is planned for these children and families with mental health challenges and additional needs who are out of formal school contexts, given that they sometimes need help, either when they are being home-educated or are in an in-between situation, at home or in another non-school context? Will funding be released for families to access trained support from either local authorities or trusted charities without being pursued for absences in those situations?
Our commitment to the mental health and well-being of our pupils is a testament to our dedication to their future and the future of our society. Let us ensure that our actions reflect this commitment by fostering an environment where every child facing mental health challenges feels supported, understood and valued, whether formally in school or not.
Let me take one area of concern: speech and language. I have some experience with families with children whose lack of speech is a cause for concern. The charity Speech and Language UK tells me that a child with speech and language problems is twice as likely as their peers to have mental health problems. Why is this? Well, its research shows that there may be anxiety or frustration caused by not understanding what people are saying or not being understood themselves. That can sometimes be the case with children with autism—as I know as a vice-president of the National Autistic Society, together with my noble friend Lady Browning. They may struggle socially at nursery and consequently have low self-esteem. They may have difficulty with thinking things through and working out what might happen and do not understand the consequences and implications of their actions. They might feel socially isolated because of their poor communication skills. Their difficulties with language and communication might not have been recognised, so they may not be getting the help and support that they need.
The best thing we can do to help is to make sure that these problems are recognised early and that the proper help is in place. That means that teachers and early years practitioners should receive training on how to help a child develop their talking and understanding of words—this is pretty basic. This will also help identify a child who is struggling. They should also know where to refer them for further support and diagnosis. It is no good discovering something and not knowing how to get it treated and supported. Schools need to be able to measure and track children’s talking and understanding of words in the same way that we do with literacy and numeracy. We need a free tool that can be used at the start of key stages 1 and 2 by class teachers so that they can spot a child who is struggling. Currently, schools must pay to do this.
Teachers need to know what is available to help children with speech and language challenges. We need guidance about what evidence-based tools and interventions work best and which might be most appropriate in each school. There also needs to be better recognition by child and adolescent mental health services of the high proportion of children with mental health problems who have speech and language challenges. Staff need to be trained on how to help children struggling with their mental health and find out what works best for them.
My noble friend Lady Morris of Yardley and the noble Earl, Lord Russell, spoke about mental health support teams. The Children’s Commissioner for England, Dame Rachel de Souza, has called for every school to have a mental health team in place by 2025. Perhaps in responding, the Minister might be able to tell us whether the Government are working towards that and agree with it.
I appreciate that I have covered a fair number of points here, and I will be more than content if the Minister, having had time to reflect, would like to write to me. I end by asking her whether she might also consider meeting Speech and Language UK, the charity that I have spoken about. Together, they might help us find some of the solutions to the problems that we are facing.
I will also refer to the independent education sector, which is well represented in Sussex. It faces many of the same challenges among the pupil body but often with greater resources for meeting them. I wish to draw attention to just one aspect of this, since it indicates, as has been stated, a loss from the maintained sector: the need for arts provision, especially music, as a non-word-based medium that makes articulation of their deepest feelings much easier for children who might struggle with words. This can be especially true for pupils who experience the trauma of violence and abuse, as it can be for neurodiverse pupils, those with learning difficulties, or those for whom English is not their first language. The noble Baroness, Lady Bull, outlined these important points in greater detail in her comments.
This is something that Brighton College has developed remarkably well. It has used it as a way to welcome Ukrainian refugees into its life and to forge a strong partnership with schools in the East End of London. The model speaks to us about something that has been done and shown to be of enormous value, which surely also belongs to the right of all children as part of their school experience, especially those children with special needs.
Reference to the importance of wider influences that contribute to the educational life of young people is also evident in a recent study undertaken by the University of Leeds, which indicates that when fathers engage in
“multiple types of structured activities several times a week”,
it
“helps to enrich a child’s cognitive and language development”.
This raises important questions about the role of fathers in parenting, and about their absence—physically, emotionally, economically—and the subconscious impact it might have on their children. From a government perspective, might this suggest that it would be worth giving attention to the gender balance of the teaching profession and encouraging an increase in male teachers, especially in the primary school sector?
These observations indicate the intensity of the context in which education is delivered by a remarkably dedicated profession of teachers and classroom assistants, who face complex human needs that have to be addressed before other aspects of learning can take place. Sustaining that profession, with adequate resources through the recruitment of people of high calibre, remuneration that is commensurate with the skills we expect of them, and public recognition of their important work, is surely one of the best contributions the Government can make to the mental, intellectual and spiritual well-being of our children and young people in their schools.