Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Lord Watson of Invergowrie Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd February 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Tyler of Enfield (LD)]

My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 233, to which my name is attached, in the place of the noble Lord, Lord O’Donnell, who apologises that he is unable to be present. I will also speak briefly to my Amendment 237.

I am sure many of us were struck by the passionate arguments put forward by the noble Lord, Lord O’Donnell, and others in Committee for a national well-being measurement programme. The need for a holistic, regular survey of young people’s experiences remains pressing. Surveys show that the UK’s young people have some of the lowest well-being in Europe and the second worst in the OECD, according to PISA data.

Amendment 233 would provide for an optional online well-being survey, delivered annually in schools, with centralised support, administration, analysis and data storage. I thank the noble Lords, Lord Layard and Lord Watson, for adding their names to this amendment as well. It is not calling for that data to be published or used in any way to penalise schools, and the wording requires confidentiality and consent at three levels: schools, parents or carers, and pupils. It is a fundamental point of this amendment that the survey is optional.

A national scheme such as this would give young people a louder voice and would create a shared evidence base that would allow us to make a shift to prevention and early intervention across a wide range of services and issues that impact on well-being. It would also promote action outside school gates to support young people. This is important because schools alone are not responsible for our children’s well-being; we all are. The new national youth strategy highlights that fact, but without good data the Government will fund the scheme yet be unable to measure its impact.

I recognise that since we began debating this Bill, the Minister’s department has begun consulting on a pupil experience framework, and this is a positive first step. However, there are two notable exceptions in the draft that I feel substantially reduce its potential. First, there are no proposed questions on psychological well-being and, secondly, there is no intent to collate or publish any of the data. I am very keen to hear from the Minister whether the Government are willing and able in some way to address these concerns. On this amendment, I end by pointing out that it is popular. According to a recent YouGov poll, 75% of parents agree that to improve young people’s well-being we need to measure it. More than 60 organisations included in the Our Well-being, Our Voice campaign, which includes the Association of School and College Leaders and the Local Government Association, are keen to see this introduced.

I now turn to my Amendment 237 on the vital topic of mental health support in schools. Mental health support teams are already making an important contribution, particularly in providing early intervention for children with mild to moderate mental health needs. The Government’s commitment to expanding these teams and, indeed, to piloting an enhanced model, is very welcome, but the evidence from schools, families and practitioners is clear. The current model does not work for all children. There is a well-recognised group of children whose needs are too complex for these low interventions, yet who do not anything like meet the threshold for specialist support. These children are often referred to as the missing middle. Too many of them are left without timely or appropriate help, and their needs often escalate as a result. As a consequence of perverse incentives within the system, children must become more unwell before they can access the support they need.

Many children also experience distress to do with family relationships or developmental issues. They benefit from therapeutic support that cannot always be delivered within the strictly structured and time-limited interventions often offered by mental health support teams. This amendment seeks to address that gap by ensuring that, alongside existing provision, children can access school-based counselling delivered by appropriately registered practitioners. It would create a clearer and more appropriate pathway for those whose needs are not currently being met and reduce pressure on CAMHS. I know that many schools are already trying to fill this gap by funding counselling services themselves, often at a significant cost to already overstretched budgets. The result is an uneven and unsustainable system in which access to support depends on geography or local resources rather than need. By placing this expectation in legislation, I feel that we can create greater consistency and equity. I also very much support Amendment 242 tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Watson, which I will leave him to outline. I beg to move.

[Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)]

My Lords, nine months after Second Reading, in which I spoke, it falls to me to speak to the last of the, by my tally, 254 amendments on Report, on top of 725 amendments tabled in Committee, so we certainly had maximum scrutiny of this Bill in your Lordships’ House.

I shall speak to my Amendment 242 and support the two other amendments in this group. Amendment 242 is similar to the one I moved in Committee in September. In that debate and in subsequent correspondence, the Minister confirmed the Government’s commitment to the principle of whole-school approaches, but she also made it clear that existing guidance will remain non-statutory and that the key support programmes that are now closed will not be reintroduced.

As a result, significant inequity in provision remains, and that is the reason that I have returned with this amendment on Report. Children’s mental health and well-being are a significant concern, and recent statistics highlight that school is a major determinant of children’s lived experience and mental health, but the voluntary guidance on whole-school approaches to mental health and well-being has reached its limits after being first published in 2015.