Asked by: Lisa Cameron (Conservative - East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment she has made of the implications for her policies of the report entitled Early evaluation of the children and young people’s mental health trailblazer programme, published by the National Institute for Health and Care Research on 20 February 2023.
Answered by Claire Coutinho - Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero
The department welcomes the findings of the report. Trailblazer sites have been instrumental in the successful roll out of Mental Health Support Teams (MHSTs) to 26% of pupils in schools and learners in further education. This has been achieved a year ahead of schedule.
The findings reveal substantial progress in implementing MHSTs, as well as some positive early impacts, despite challenges presented by the COVID-19 pandemic. These include improved school and college staff knowledge and confidence in dealing with mental health issues. Many education settings, MHSTs and wider delivery partners agreed that the programme will lead to a number of positive outcomes, including improving children and young people’s understanding of mental health and wellbeing.
The MHST programme has evolved since the Trailblazers were launched, but the findings of this report will continue to help inform future rollout and mobilisation of MHSTs to support the mental health and emotional wellbeing of children and young people. Over 500 MHSTs are expected to be operating by 2024.
Work is already underway with partners to ensure that we use the learning to inform current and future practice. Since the MHST Trailblazers became operational in 2018/19, the Education Mental Health Practitioner curriculum has been strengthened in response to feedback on needs such as learning disabilities and autism, challenging behaviour and support for parents. The department is also working with the education sector and mental health experts to protect and promote staff wellbeing. Initiatives include the Education Staff Wellbeing Charter and a new one-to-one counselling and peer support scheme for 2,000 school leaders, delivered by the charity, Education Support.
The findings of this report, as well as the 2021 interim evaluation and a planned phase 2 longer-term outcome evaluation, will continue to inform MHST roll out and drive improvements in evidence-based mental health and emotional wellbeing support for children and young people.
Asked by: Lisa Cameron (Conservative - East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if she will make an assessment of the implications for her policies of the report of the Independent investigation into allegations of antisemitism within NUS, published on 12 January 2023; and what steps the Government is taking to help counter antisemitism in universities.
Answered by Robert Halfon
This report that shows that the National Union of Students (NUS) has, over a number of years, systematically failed to represent the interests of Jewish students, and failed to tackle antisemitic practices within its own organisation. This is not acceptable. The NUS should be an organisation where Jewish students not only feel safe to be themselves, but where their full and equal participation is actively welcomed.
Higher education (HE), more broadly, should do all it can to root out antisemitism. The recent Community Security Trust (CST) report showing a 22% increase in antisemitic incidents on campus over the last two years is deeply concerning.
The department has encouraged HE providers to adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism, to have absolute clarity of what constitutes antisemitic behaviour. 245 providers in England have adopted the IHRA definition, including the vast majority of universities. We would urge those providers that have not yet adopted to the definition to do so, and for those that have, to ensure that they are fully complying with the definition.
Asked by: Lisa Cameron (Conservative - East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, with reference to the findings of the study entitled Perfectionism Is Increasing Over Time: A Meta-Analysis of Birth Cohort Differences From 1989 to 2016, published in 2019 in the Psychological Bulletin, if she will make an assessment of the potential impact of perfectionism on the mental health of (a) school, (b) college and (c) university students.
Answered by Claire Coutinho - Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero
The department collects and assesses a range of data related to children and young people’s mental health to identify trends and better understand the issues adversely affecting mental wellbeing, and publishes an annual State of the Nation report to reflect this.
While the department does not plan to make a specific assessment of the impact of perfectionism on the mental health of students, it is taking a range of action to ensure schools, colleges and universities in the UK can support their pupils and students with these underlying issues.
Our statutory Relationships, Sex and Health Education curriculum covers a range of topics that help pupils identify and manage the issues in their lives, develop resilience, and seek support where necessary. This includes topics such as body image, dealing with social media expectations, curating a specific image of yourself online and understanding how online information can be targeted at them.
The department is also funding all schools and colleges in the UK to train senior mental health leads on how to put in place effective approaches to mental health and wellbeing. This includes developing a supportive culture where pupils feel able to speak openly about the pressures that they are under and deciding what pastoral support to provide to pupils and students based on that experience.
As autonomous institutions, higher education (HE) providers are responsible for supporting their students during their time at university, and this includes evaluating what services their students need and the effectiveness of support services. The department and the Office for Students continue to work closely with the HE sector to promote and fund effective practice to ensure students are well-supported to enable full participation in HE, leading to successful outcomes.
Asked by: Lisa Cameron (Conservative - East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, whether the Government has made an assessment of the implications for its policies of Action for Children’s report entitled Too Little Too Late.
Answered by Will Quince
The ‘Too Little, Too Late’ report makes three main recommendations. Firstly, it recommends an increase in funding for a range of early intervention services. In the autumn Budget and Spending Review 2021, the government announced a £500 million package for families. This includes £300 million to transform ‘Start for Life’ services and create a network of family hubs in half of the council areas in England, and a £200 million uplift to the Supporting Families programme. The additional Supporting Families funding represents around a 40% real-terms uplift for the programme by the 2024/25 financial year, taking total planned investment across the next three years to £695 million. This funding will help up to 300,000 more families facing multiple, interconnected issues to access effective support and improve their life outcomes. It will also continue to reduce the pressure on reactive, statutory services as the system starts to rebalance away from intervening at crisis point.
The report’s other recommendations include a legal duty for early help, and additional data collection on early help. The Independent Review of Children’s Social Care is due to set out its final recommendations this spring, and the government will consider those relevant to early help to inform any next steps.
Asked by: Lisa Cameron (Conservative - East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps his Department is taking to (a) develop early-intervention strategies to ensure that deaf children do not fall behind in education and (b) include the funding of auditory verbal therapy in those strategies.
Answered by Will Quince
The department is firmly committed to ensuring that children with special education needs and disabilities (SEND), including those with hearing impairments, receive the support they need to achieve in their early years, at school and college.
The early years foundation stage statutory framework states that all early years providers must have arrangements in place to support children with SEND. We provide multiple sources of funding to support early years providers to deliver the free entitlements to children with SEND.
The Disability Access Fund is worth £615 per eligible child per year. In addition, local authorities must establish a SEN Inclusion Fund to work with providers to address the needs of individual children with SEN. The Early Years National Funding Formula also contains an additional needs element to take account of the number of 3- and 4-year-old children with additional needs in an area.
The government recognises that the current SEND system, established through the Children and Families Act 2014, does not consistently deliver for children and young people with SEND, their families or the people and services who support them. The SEND Review is seeking to improve the outcomes and experience of all children and young people with SEND, within a sustainable system. The Review will publish as a green paper for full public consultation in the first three months of this year.
Asked by: Lisa Cameron (Conservative - East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what policies the Government has in place to tackle antisemitism (a) on university campuses and (b) in the broader education system; and what steps the Government is taking with academic institutions to improve the safety of British Jewish students.
Answered by Michelle Donelan - Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology
There is no place in our society, including within our education system, for antisemitism. The government has acted over a number of years to send a clear message that antisemitism will not be tolerated in our schools, colleges, and higher education (HE) institutions.
The government's action on antisemitism in HE has included working closely with Universities UK (UUK), and the Office for Students (OfS) as sector regulator. UUK recently published a briefing on tackling antisemitism in HE, which includes recommending adopting the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism. Adopting the widely recognised definition sends a strong signal that HE providers take these issues seriously and is an important tool in tackling antisemitism.
The former Secretary of State for Education wrote to the sector in October 2020, calling upon leaders to adopt the IHRA definition. He repeated this message in May 2021, reinforcing the government's expectation that providers adopt the IHRA definition, stressing the even greater importance of doing so in light of an increased number of antisemitic incidents recorded as a result of the conflict in the Middle East.
In addition, in his February 2021 strategic guidance letter, the former Secretary of State for Education asked the OfS to undertake a scoping exercise, to identify providers which are reluctant to adopt the definition. In response to this, on 10 November 2021 the OfS published a list of providers who have adopted the definition. I am pleased to report good progress in the last year: an increase from around 30 to over 200 providers having adopted the IHRA definition. This includes the vast majority of universities. The list is available here: https://www.officeforstudents.org.uk/advice-and-guidance/student-wellbeing-and-protection/prevent-and-address-harassment-and-sexual-misconduct/tackling-antisemitism/.
The decision on adoption of the definition rests with individual providers, but the government will continue to urge them to adopt the definition and ensure that HE is a genuinely fulfilling and welcoming experience for everyone.
The government is also committed to stamping out antisemitism in schools. On 28 May, the former Secretary of State for Education wrote to all schools to reiterate that pupils and staff must be kept safe, and there is absolutely no place for hate and prejudice. This intervention was a clear message that this government will not tolerate antisemitism in our schools and will act where necessary to tackle it.
The government has also continued to take action to support schools in this area, including providing over £3.5 million of funding to anti-bullying organisations like the Anne Frank Trust, between 2016 and 2021. We are currently running a procurement exercise to fund activity in 2021-22, to make sure that schools have the right support in place to prevent bullying.
Any form of antisemitism is abhorrent, and I will continue to work tirelessly to ensure it is eradicated from our world-leading education system.
Asked by: Lisa Cameron (Conservative - East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what plans his Department has to provide for the early years in its covid-19 education recovery plan; and how play will be (a) encouraged, (b) supported and (c) facilitated in that plan.
Answered by Vicky Ford
On 2 June 2021, as part of the government’s announcement on providing an additional £1.4 billon for education recovery, we announced a £153 million investment for high-quality professional development for early years practitioners. This includes new programmes focusing on key areas such as speech and language development, and physical and emotional development for the youngest children, of which play is an important part. This is in addition to the £18 million announced in February and the £9 million announced in June 2020 to support early language development for children in light of the COVID-19 outbreak.
The package will build on our Early Years Foundation Stage reforms, which support more effective early years curriculum and assessment, and reducing unnecessary assessment paperwork so that practitioners and teachers can spend more time engaging children in rich activities, including through play, to support their learning.
Asked by: Lisa Cameron (Conservative - East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how his Department plans to fund the forthcoming family hub network.
Answered by Vicky Ford
There are already many family hubs up and running across the country. Local areas are using their existing funding pots to move to a family hub model.
We are strengthening support for families by championing family hubs to help families access the crucial services they need. The government is investing a further £14 million in family hubs, including a new National Centre for Family Hubs to provide expert advice and guidance, an evaluation innovation fund to build the evidence base, and data and digital products to support the practical implementation of family hubs by helping local early years professionals to provide joined up planning and support for families.
Asked by: Lisa Cameron (Conservative - East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many and what proportion of the children referred to CAMHS in 2019-20 that did not meet the threshold to receive treatment received support from a school counselling service.
Answered by Vicky Ford
School and college-based counselling is valuable provision which can play a particularly effective role as part of a whole school or college approach within which support can come from several sources. In that context, it is important that schools and colleges have the freedom to decide what support to offer to students and staff based on their particular needs and drawing on an evidence base of effective practice. The purpose of the blueprint was to support schools to make provision and set out advice from school and counselling experts to illustrate to schools how to make best use of counselling support.
The government does not hold central data on the mental health support accessed by individual children and young people. The department does not require schools to provide regular information on the provision of counselling in schools and colleges for pupils and staff. Our most recent survey of mental health provision in schools and colleges published in 2017 found that 61% of schools and colleges (56% of primary schools, 84% of secondary schools and 93% of colleges) reported offering access to counselling service for their pupils.
In the long term, we remain committed to our joint green paper delivery programme with the Department of Health and Social Care and NHS England, including introducing new mental health support teams for all schools and colleges, providing training for senior mental health leads in schools and colleges, and testing approaches to faster access to NHS specialist support.
We have recently announced a £79 million boost to children and young people’s mental health support, including through mental health support teams. These teams, which provide early intervention on mental health and emotional wellbeing issues in schools and colleges, will grow from over 180 teams currently established or in development to around 400 by April 2023, supporting nearly 3 million children across the country. This increase means that millions of children and young people will have access to significantly expanded mental health services.
Asked by: Lisa Cameron (Conservative - East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, with reference to the document published by his Department in 2016 entitled Counselling in schools: a blueprint for the future, what progress his Department has made on meeting the expectation set out in that document that all schools should provide counselling services to pupils.
Answered by Vicky Ford
School and college-based counselling is valuable provision which can play a particularly effective role as part of a whole school or college approach within which support can come from several sources. In that context, it is important that schools and colleges have the freedom to decide what support to offer to students and staff based on their particular needs and drawing on an evidence base of effective practice. The purpose of the blueprint was to support schools to make provision and set out advice from school and counselling experts to illustrate to schools how to make best use of counselling support.
The government does not hold central data on the mental health support accessed by individual children and young people. The department does not require schools to provide regular information on the provision of counselling in schools and colleges for pupils and staff. Our most recent survey of mental health provision in schools and colleges published in 2017 found that 61% of schools and colleges (56% of primary schools, 84% of secondary schools and 93% of colleges) reported offering access to counselling service for their pupils.
In the long term, we remain committed to our joint green paper delivery programme with the Department of Health and Social Care and NHS England, including introducing new mental health support teams for all schools and colleges, providing training for senior mental health leads in schools and colleges, and testing approaches to faster access to NHS specialist support.
We have recently announced a £79 million boost to children and young people’s mental health support, including through mental health support teams. These teams, which provide early intervention on mental health and emotional wellbeing issues in schools and colleges, will grow from over 180 teams currently established or in development to around 400 by April 2023, supporting nearly 3 million children across the country. This increase means that millions of children and young people will have access to significantly expanded mental health services.