Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps her Department is taking to support university students with their mental health.

The department works closely with the Office for Students (OfS) and the higher education (HE) sector to promote and fund effective practice around supporting the mental health and wellbeing of young people.

This government is investing at least £2.3 billion a year of extra funding to expand and transform mental health services by 2023/24, as part of the NHS Long Term Plan. In addition, £500 million has been provided in 2021/22, which included £79 million for young people’s mental health services last year, enabling around 22,500 more children and young people to access support in their communities, and across education settings.

To ensure that all students have access to dedicated mental health support no matter where they study, the department have asked the OfS to fund Student Space, a mental health and wellbeing online platform for students, with up to £3.6 million invested so far. It has been accessed by over 250,000 students since its launch in August 2020. The website for Student Space can be found here: https://www.studentspace.org.uk.

The OfS has allocated an additional £15 million in the financial year 2022/23 to help address the challenges to student mental health posed by the transition to university, and to support joined up working with NHS services. This funding targets those students in greatest need of such services, including vulnerable groups and hard to reach students.

To make faster progress, the OfS will allocate up to £3 million of this funding towards developing stronger partnership working with NHS services. Ministers from the Department for Education and the Department of Health and Social Care chaired a summit in June 2022 to launch this work, and the departments continue to work together to achieve this common goal.

It is essential that universities have access to robust evidence regarding effective practice. Alongside funding of £9 million over the past 4 years to develop innovative approaches to supporting student mental health, the OfS has recently commissioned a consortium, led by the Centre for Transforming Access and Student Outcomes in Higher Education (TASO) to establish and disseminate successful approaches across the sector. This work will lead to the creation of a central, online hub to share better ways to support student mental health.

In May 2022 the department appointed university Vice-Chancellor Edward Peck as HE's first ever Student Support Champion. His role will include promotion of technologies to flag the early warning signs where students may be struggling.