Luciana Berger – 2015 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Education

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Luciana Berger on 2015-12-07.

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment she has made of the effect of poor mental health on the education outcomes of children up to 18 years old.

Mr Sam Gyimah

An estimated 1 in 10 children have a diagnosable mental health disorder, and more have lower level problems. We know that all forms of mental health disorder in children are associated with disruption to education and absence from school. We also know there is a strong association between conduct disorders in adolescence and a lack of qualifications in early adulthood.

This is why the government has made good mental health, character and resilience a high priority. We want all children and young people to be able to fulfil their potential both academically and in terms of their mental wellbeing. The Department of Health has committed an additional £1.4 billion of funding which will be used to help radically improve mental health services for children, young people and new mothers over the next 5 years.

Schools and colleges have an important role to play in supporting the resilience and mental health of children and young people. To support schools develop approaches that suit the particular needs of their students we have:

• contributed £1.5 million to a joint pilot for training single points of contact in schools and specialist mental health services to ensure that children and young people have timely access to specialist support where needed;
• funded guidance and lesson plans to support age-appropriate teaching about mental health;
• published guidance on the provision of high quality counselling in schools, and mental health and behaviour;
• provided funding worth £4.9 million this year, through a dedicated mental health strand within our VCS programme, to support 17 projects delivering a wide range of support across the country to children and young people with mental health issues. These include projects to promote positive mental health in schools with organisations such as MIND and Place2Be.