Guidance

Promoting and supporting mental health and wellbeing in schools and colleges

Find resources to help you develop a whole school or college approach to mental health and wellbeing.

From:
Department for Education
Published
2 June 2021
Last updated
7 January 2025 — See all updates

Applies to England

The importance of good mental health in schools and colleges

Good mental health and wellbeing helps children and young people:

  • develop
  • attend school
  • engage in learning
  • achieve and thrive

Schools and colleges contribute to wellbeing by providing:

  • a safe, calm, inclusive and supportive learning environment
  • early targeted support for pupils and learners who need help

Embedding an evidence-based, holistic, whole school or college approach to promoting and supporting mental health and wellbeing, helps to achieve this.

Schools and colleges should identify a mental health lead. The mental health lead should be a member of staff empowered to develop and oversee their setting’s whole school or college approach.

Principles of a whole school or college approach

The Department for Education (DfE) and the Office for Health Improvement and Disparities published guidance on the 8 principles of a whole school or college approach to mental health and wellbeing. These are:

  • an ethos and environment that promotes respect, and values diversity
  • leadership and management that supports and champions efforts to promote emotional health and wellbeing
  • staff development to support their own wellbeing and that of pupils and learners
  • curriculum teaching and learning to promote resilience and support social and emotional learning
  • enabling student voice to influence decisions
  • identifying the need for and monitoring the impact of interventions
  • targeted support and appropriate referral
  • working with parents and carers

Senior mental health lead training  

The application window for reserving a grant for DfE-funded senior mental health lead training is now closed.

If you have already completed form 1 to reserve a grant, you need to:

  • book on a DfE quality assured training course
  • complete form 2 of your application

You need to do both of these things before 31 January 2025.

Senior mental health lead training has information on how to complete your application.

DfE expects that courses will continue to be available as part of ongoing school and college-funded continuing professional development. We will provide details about available courses early in 2025.

Mental health support teams   

Mental health support teams (MHSTs) provide additional capacity to:

  • promote good mental health
  • meet the mental health needs of children and young people in primary, secondary and further education settings through early support

MHSTs have 3 core functions. They:

  • provide early evidence-based interventions for mild to moderate mental health issues
  • help school or college mental health leads develop and introduce a whole school or college approach
  • give timely advice to school and college staff, and liaise with external specialist services, to help children and young people get the right support and stay in education

DfE and NHS England are working together to introduce MHSTs.

MHSTs are a new workforce of education mental health practitioners who work alongside senior clinicians and other professionals. They integrate with the existing mental health and wellbeing support in and around schools and colleges provided by:

NHS England has more information.

Resources for planning and implementing a whole school or college approach

Mental health lead resource hub has been developed by DfE in partnership with education representatives and mental health experts to help mental health leads in their role. It includes evidence-based practical resources and tools for schools and colleges.

The targeted support toolkit is a practical guide and tool to help schools and colleges review, refresh and develop effective targeted support for learners with mental health or social and emotional wellbeing needs.

Resources are available for staff, parents and carers to support attendance and mental wellbeing in schools and colleges.

Teaching blog includes posts written by teachers which can be filtered to find posts about student and staff mental health

Psychological first aid training supports children and young people’s mental health during emergencies and crisis situations

Mental health and wellbeing resources for pupils, parents and teachers

Staff wellbeing and development

School and college teachers and leaders can access support for their own wellbeing and to address challenges around workload.  

The education staff wellbeing charter is a declaration of support for, and a set of commitments to, the wellbeing and mental health of everyone working in education. It directs education staff to mental health and wellbeing resources.

Guidance developed with school leaders to improve workload and wellbeing for school staff is available. It has free resources including a workload reduction toolkit and resources to help track and evaluate the impact of workload reduction measures.

DfE is funding the charity, Education Support to provide free, professional supervision to school and college leaders. Professional supervision enables leaders to work with qualified and experienced supervisors to develop strategies to support their mental wellbeing.

Other relevant, professional development available includes: 

Information for parents, carers, teachers, pupils and learners

The education hub provides links to organisations that offer mental health support.

Mental health, behaviour and attendance

Mental health and behaviour guidance is available to help schools support pupils whose mental health affects their behaviour.

To support the working together to improve school attendance guidance, DfE has produced guidance for schools on when a mental health issue affects attendance.

A collection of resources on improving behaviour in schools is available to support schools and trusts in developing, implementing and maintaining a whole-school behaviour culture.

Statutory guidance

When developing your whole school or college approach to mental health and wellbeing, make sure you understand the statutory responsibilities in the following guidance:

Keeping children safe in education outlines the statutory duty for all schools to promote the welfare of their pupils. This includes:

  • preventing impairment of children’s health or development
  • taking action to help all children have the best outcomes

Local support

Schools and colleges should be aware that their local authority has responsibility for:

  • promoting and protecting public physical and mental health
  • safeguarding children and young people
  • assessing and supporting children with SEND

Your local authority may be able to:

  • offer support through routine school improvement, health promotion or educational psychology functions
  • direct you to other relevant training and services in your local area

Curriculum teaching and learning

The government has established an independent Curriculum and Assessment Review, covering ages 5 to 18. The review group will publish an interim report early in 2025.

All pupils are taught about issues related to mental health as part of the relationships and sex education (RSE) and health education curriculum. The department is reviewing the RHSE statutory guidance before confirming next steps later in 2025.

The PSHE Association has published advice for teachers on teaching about mental health and wellbeing as part of the RSE and health education aspects of the curriculum.

A mental wellbeing training module is available to support the teaching of mental wellbeing as part of this curriculum.

Updates to this page

Published 2 June 2021
Last updated 7 January 2025 + show all updates

  1. Existing applications for the senior mental health lead training grant need to be completed by 31 January 2025. The application window to apply for the grant closed on 31 December 2024.

  2. Replaced 'mental health and wellbeing list of resources' with link to 'Anna Freud’s Mentally healthy schools'.

  3. Updated resources to keep them current.

  4. Updated to reflect DfE's new offer of a second grant for senior mental health leads and with latest statistics on the uptake of the grant.

  5. A link has been added to the guidance on promoting children and young people's mental health and wellbeing. Further detail on the increased numbers of Mental Health Support Teams from 2024 has also been included.

  6. A reference to the Mermaids advice line has been removed from the list of mental health and wellbeing resources.

  7. Updated the figure in 'nearly 500 mental health support teams will be working with and in schools and colleges attended by almost 3 million pupils in England' to 'nearly 400'.

  8. Updated information on whole school and college approach, RSHE and Mental Health Support Teams.

  9. Updated ‘Whole School or College Approach’, ‘Senior mental health leads training’, ‘Mental Health Support Teams (MHSTs)’ and ‘Mental health and wellbeing resources’ sections.

  10. Added a list of mental health and wellbeing resources for teachers, school staff and school leaders.

  11. First published.

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