Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps her Department is taking to help ensure that children are not put under excessive pressure by tests in primary school.

The Department does not recommend that pupils in primary school devote excessive preparation time to assessment, and not at the expense of pupils’ mental health and wellbeing. Schools should support a culture of wellbeing amongst staff and pupils.

Research conducted by the University College London Institute of Education, which was published in 2021, found that there was little evidence to changes in wellbeing around the time of Key Stage 2 tests, or that children in England become happier once these tests are over.

The Department is committed to ensuring schools and colleges are safe, calm and supportive environments which promote mental wellbeing. The Department is committed to providing senior mental health lead training to all state schools and colleges by 2025. More than 10,000 schools and colleges have received senior mental health lead training grants so far, which includes more than 6 in 10 state-funded secondary schools. A further £10 million provided this year means up to two thirds of state schools and colleges can benefit by April 2023.

This is in addition to record funding for children and young people’s mental health support through the NHS long term plan, and the £79 million boost announced in 2021, meaning more than 2.4 million children and young people now have a mental health support team (MHST) attached to their schools and colleges. The number of MHSTs is planned to increase from 287 to over 500 teams by 2024.

The Department has also recently brought together all its sources of advice for schools and colleges into a single site on GOV.UK, which includes signposting to external sources of mental health and wellbeing support for teachers, school staff and school leaders. This can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/transforming-children-and-young-peoples-mental-health-provision.