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.
Applies to England
The importance of promoting and supporting mental health and wellbeing
The government’s Plan for Change aims to break down barriers to opportunity. A key element of this plan is to improve support for children and young people’s mental health and wellbeing in schools.
Good mental health and wellbeing improves standards in schools and helps pupils achieve and thrive in education, setting them up well for life and work.
Good mental health and wellbeing helps pupils:
- attend school
- develop key life skills, particularly social and emotional skills
- engage in learning
- achieve academically
- have better longer term outcomes, such as future employment
Embedding an evidence-based, holistic, whole school or college approach to mental health and wellbeing helps to achieve this.
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
Schools and colleges should appoint a mental health lead to develop and oversee their setting’s whole school or college approach.
Resources for developing a whole school or college approach
The mental health lead resource hub was 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 helps schools and colleges review, refresh and develop 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 from teachers which can be filtered to find information about student and staff mental health.
Psychological first aid training supports children and young people’s mental health during emergencies and crisis situations.
A list of is available. As of February 2025, we do not quality assure courses and cannot guarantee their availability.
Mental health support teams
Mental health support teams (MHSTs) provide additional capacity to promote and support mental health and wellbeing in primary, secondary and further education settings.
MHSTs have 3 core functions:
- provide early, evidence-based interventions for common mental health issues
- support mental health leads to develop and embed a whole school or college approach
- give timely advice to staff, and liaise with external specialist services, to help children and young people get the right support and stay in education
DfE, DHSC and the NHS are working together to roll out MHSTs.
MHSTs include 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:
- counsellors
- educational psychologists
- school nurses
- school and college pastoral care teams
- educational welfare officers
- the voluntary and community sector
- local authorities
- NHS children and young people’s mental health services
- the voluntary sector
NHS has more information.
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:
- national professional qualifications (NPQs) - funded courses for state schools and state-funded 16 to 19 organisations
- NPQ for leading behaviour and culture for teachers who want to create and maintain a culture of good behaviour and high expectations in which staff and pupils thrive
DfE is undertaking a formal review of the existing NPQs. It is expected to take approximately 18 months. The existing suite of NPQs remains until the review is complete.
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:
- Special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) code of practice
- Keeping children safe in education
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 conducted 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 2021Last updated 17 March 2025 + show all updates
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Updated to clarify that grant funding ended on 31 January.
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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.
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Replaced 'mental health and wellbeing list of resources' with link to 'Anna Freud’s Mentally healthy schools'.
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Updated resources to keep them current.
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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.
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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.
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A reference to the Mermaids advice line has been removed from the list of mental health and wellbeing resources.
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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'.
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Updated information on whole school and college approach, RSHE and Mental Health Support Teams.
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Updated ‘Whole School or College Approach’, ‘Senior mental health leads training’, ‘Mental Health Support Teams (MHSTs)’ and ‘Mental health and wellbeing resources’ sections.
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Added a list of mental health and wellbeing resources for teachers, school staff and school leaders.
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First published.