Primary Schools: Mental Health Problems

Question

15:10:00

Asked by

To ask His Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to deal with mental health problems in primary schools.

My Lords, this is a particularly pertinent Question as it is Children’s Mental Health Week. The Government are committed to setting every child up for the best start in life and, as part of our ambition for high and rising standards in schools, helping every child to achieve and thrive. We will provide access to specialist mental health professionals in every school, so that every young person has access to early support to address problems before they escalate.

I am grateful for the Minister’s reply. It is important that children and young people have access to mental health support, but of course the reasons that cause mental health and well-being problems need to be carefully considered, whether it is bullying or online problems. Every school needs to know how well children are doing, but I would suggest to the Minister that maybe the pressures that key stage SATs put on 10 and 11 year-olds can at times be very harmful indeed. Would the Minister consider looking at how we might alleviate those pressures, by perhaps considering having standardised teacher assessments or ways that make it much more enjoyable rather than a frightening experience for them?

I am afraid that I think it is important that we maintain both the check on students’ progress and the accountability for our schools that key stage tests enable us to have. So, no, I will not be taking the noble Lord up on his suggestion of fundamentally changing those any time in the near future.

My Lords, for children and adults, feeling sad and unhappy is a normal human experience. Recent polling found that 84% of GPs think society’s approach to mental health has led to the normal ups and downs of life being seen as medical problems. However, family breakdown—one of the causes that the noble Lord, Lord Storey, did not mention—is an underrecognised driver of children’s poor mental health. How are the Government guarding against overdiagnosis of mental illness in children and also helping parents understand that parental splits profoundly affect their children?

The noble Lord makes some important points, based of course on his long experience of supporting families to support their children. I am clear that clinical support should be sought for children only where it is appropriate. Schools need to seek the right source of support at the right time for social and emotional needs, and that is where mental health support teams and other professionals can assist in making those decisions. On the important point he makes about family breakdowns, I completely share his view that it can be enormously difficult for children when their parents split. I am sure he will be pleased to hear that the Ministry of Justice provides support to help individuals to make child arrangements and find emotional support, for example. Resources are also available for that on the Cafcass website.

My Lords, the recent health visiting survey suggests that there is an inadequate service in the majority of England compared to the other three countries. It also shows that there are exemplars of good practice, such as in Manchester, but that families are sending children to primary school having had no health-visiting support prior to going to school because of the paucity. How is the Minister’s department working with the Department of Health and Social Care to look at the provision of health visitors?

The noble Baroness makes an important point about the support available to children at the very earliest age. This and developing the healthiest generation of children are key objectives for my colleagues in the Department of Health and Social Care. We have set a clear objective in our Plan for Change to ensure that we increase the proportion of children who arrive at school with the development to enable them to then learn and make a success of the rest of their lives. I am sure that this will play an important part in achieving that.

My Lords, the Rural Mental Health report produced in the other place highlighted that “NHS mental health services are often not fairly accessible for rural communities”, with services largely centred in towns and cities, “creating barriers to access, compounded by the limitations and weaknesses of rural public transport and digital connectivity”. I declare an interest because 65% of small, rural primary schools across England are Church schools. When developing plans to improve mental health provision in primary schools, how does the Minister intend to ensure equity of access and quality for students in small, rural settings?

The right reverend Prelate makes an important point about the challenges for schools in rural areas to access the mental health support that we will make available. He identified the considerable difficulties for young people who really need child and adolescent mental health services in accessing them. That is why this Government will fund an additional 8,500 mental health workers to support both children and adults. As we continue to develop the policy to ensure that there is access to a mental health professional in every school, we will certainly bear in mind the important points that he made about the particular needs of rural schools.

My Lords, does my noble friend agree with me—going back to a point that the noble Lord, Lord Storey, raised about bullying—that children with observable mental health problems, or who are on the autism spectrum, are very often vulnerable to bullying in schools, and sometimes that will exacerbate the challenges that they already have? In what way are the Government supporting schools to ensure that children who have those difficulties are supported, particularly in the playground?

That is an appropriately wide-ranging question from my noble friend. First, on the topic of bullying, it is enormously important that every school has a strong policy and strong action to tackle bullying and to support children. She raised the issue of children with autism and other needs, and we are making progress there with the national framework for autism assessment services. We are also very clear that no child should need to wait for an assessment to receive the necessary support from schools. That will include support with learning and, as she rightly said, support for them to play a full and safe part in the life of the school.

My Lords, the Minister will be aware of the increasing evidence of the correlation between smartphone and social media use and an increase in children’s mental health problems. According to a recent survey done by Teacher Tapp, just over 75% of teachers surveyed who worked in primary schools reported that mobile phones had to be handed in at the beginning of the school day, but that fell to 48% in secondary schools. Given the mounting concerns that we are hearing, particularly from health professionals, about the impact of smartphones on children’s mental health, will the Government think again and follow a precautionary principle in banning mobile phones in schools until we have the evidence that they are safe?

As the noble Baroness knows, there is strong guidance to schools to develop appropriate policies with respect to smartphones —in my view, ensuring that children do not have access to smartphones during the period of time that they are in school—but there is a whole range of ways of ensuring that that happens, and I think it is appropriate to leave it to head teachers to follow that guidance and ensure that their children are protected from any impacts of smartphones and enabled to achieve and thrive in their schools.

My Lords, does the Minister agree that the first thing we need to do is to make sure teachers know when they should start to access extra help and support, even if it is available, because without that guidance, you really are going to waste a lot of time and money?

The noble Lord is right that a key part of our special educational needs and disabilities programme needs to be to ensure that teachers have the continuing professional development and initial teacher training to be able to identify at an early stage those children who are in mental distress and need support. That needs to happen even earlier, which is why children’s mental health and well-being is also an important part of the early years curriculum, and why we have provided support to early years practitioners to be able to identify that early as well.