Lord Ouseley – 2015 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Education
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Lord Ouseley on 2015-12-01.
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the extent of self-harm among school children as a consequence of bullying in the education system.
Lord Nash
The Department has not made a systematic assessment of the extent of self-harm as a consequence of bullying. There is wide variation in reported rates of self-harming among school children because individuals often do not disclose it. However, schools are well placed to spot a change in behaviour that may indicate something is wrong. To assist school staff, we published advice for schools on mental health and behaviour, providing teachers with information and tools that will help them to identify and support pupils with mental health needs, including advice about making referrals to a specialist service when necessary. The advice includes specific information about self-harm and effective treatment, as well as a school case study about how to address mental health issues in a non-stigmatising way in the classroom.
The SEND Code of Practice makes it clear that schools need to look past any behaviour issues to identify underlying problems, including mental health issues, and put support in place where learning is affected. Our new joint training pilots with the NHS will further help to schools to effectively support children and young people with mental health concerns.
The new PSHE lesson plans include teaching about self-harm and to help schools teach about mental health we have funded the PSHE Association to provide new mental health guidance and resources. This will help schools provide age appropriate teaching about mental health issues through the teaching of PSHE.
All bullying is unacceptable and every school is required to have a behaviour policy with measures to tackle all forms of bullying. They are held to account by Ofsted and inspectors will look at records and analysis of bullying, discriminatory and prejudicial behaviour. In 2015-16, the Government has provided £3.3m to charitable organisations to help tackle bullying and to provide support for those who are bullied. This is further to the £4m provided over the period 2013-15.
