Top PDF House of Commons Library: Briefing paper: Number 07196, 1 August 2018: Children and young people’s mental health – policy, services, funding and education

At a national level, the pilot programme very much demonstrates the potential added value of providing schools and NHS CAMHS with opportunities to engage in joint planning and training activities, improving the clarity of local pathways to specialist mental health support, and establishing named points of contact in schools and NHS CAMHS. At the same time, the evaluation has underlined the lack of available resources to deliver this offer universally across all schools at this stage within many of the pilot areas. Given the pilots show that additional resources would need to be allocated locally to deliver the offer universally across all schools, further work is needed to understand how sustainable delivery models can be developed. 60

At a national level, the pilot programme very much demonstrates the potential added value of providing schools and NHS CAMHS with opportunities to engage in joint planning and training activities, improving the clarity of local pathways to specialist mental health support, and establishing named points of contact in schools and NHS CAMHS. At the same time, the evaluation has underlined the lack of available resources to deliver this offer universally across all schools at this stage within many of the pilot areas. Given the pilots show that additional resources would need to be allocated locally to deliver the offer universally across all schools, further work is needed to understand how sustainable delivery models can be developed. 74

We are also now seeing the emergence of new and creative ways of supporting people with mental health problems and those with learning difficulties across the criminal justice system. Initiatives like street triage, which offers a more humane crisis response, and youth justice liaison and diversion, which provides support to children and young people when they come into contact with the police. We still have a lot to learn from these as we build the evidence of what makes the biggest difference to people’s lives and the most cost-effective use of public money.

There is a strong connection between mental ill health and suicide or self-harm. The ability to identify students who are at risk of suicide is difficult. The Stepchange website states that only 12% of students who died by suicide were reported to be seeing student counselling services. In September 2018 Universities UK (UUK) and PAPYRUS, a national charity dedicated to the prevention of young suicide, published Suicide Safer Universities. This guidance provides a framework to help university staff understand student suicide, mitigate risk, intervene when students get into difficulties, and respond to deaths. The document also aims to help university leaders develop strategies to prevent student suicides. A number of higher education institutions have introduced suicide prevention strategies. The University of Wolverhampton and the University of Cumbria employ Connecting with People and the

in four students (24 per cent) did not attend school, college or university because they were concerned what other students would say and 15 per cent of people experienced bullying as a result of mental health problems. It also found that nearly a third (31 per cent) of those had been subject to discriminatory language, including being called “crazy” and “attention seeking”. Nearly half of respondents (48 per cent) chose not to tell people about their mental health problems, instead saying they were absent due to physical illness. In response to the findings, the then Minster for Care Services, Norman Lamb, said:

In the March 2015 Budget, the Chancellor of the Exchequer announced £1.25 billion of additional investment in children’s mental health over the next five years (with the addition of previous announcements of £150 million for eating disorders, this has been presented as a total of £1.4 billion over the five years from 2015-16). Of the additional funding announced in March 2015, £1 billion is to be provided to start new access standards for children and adolescent services, which the 2015- 2017 Government anticipated would see 110,000 more children cared for over the next Parliament. The 2015 Government also committed to investing £118 million by 2018-19 to complete the roll-out of the Children and Young People’s IAPT (Improving Access to Psychological Therapies) programme, to ensure talking therapies are available throughout England. Alongside this, £75 million will be provided between 2015 and 2020 to provide perinatal and antenatal mental health support for women. The Department for Education will also invest £1.5 million to pilot joint training for designated leads in CAMHS services and schools to improve access to mental health services for children and young people. 17

Admission authorities may have been reluctant to agree to parental requests because they felt it would open the floodgates—that large numbers of parents of summer-born children would want them to be admitted outside their normal age group—and that, as a consequence, the admission system would become impossible to manage. I do not believe this to be true. The reception year of school is the final part of the early years foundation stage, and we know that most parents are happy for their child to go to school at this point, confident that they are ready for the challenge. We believe that only a small proportion of parents of summer-born children wish them to be admitted to reception at the age of five—for example, children born in the late summer months or born prematurely. On that point—the first of the three my hon. Friend made—I will further

The Government is undertaking major reforms to the technical education system in England, including the introduction of new technical study programmes at level 3 – T Levels – from September 2020 onwards. The proposed reforms were first set out in the Post-16 Skills Plan. They were based on recommendations made in the report of an independent panel on technical education, led by Lord Sainsbury, which had been established by the Government to “advise on measures which could improve technical education in England.” 13 A consultation on the

In addition to this economic rationale, the report outlined a social need for change: that individuals should have access to a national system of technical qualifications that is easy to understand, has credibility with employers and remains stable over time. The current system, it argued, failed on all three counts, comprising “a confusing and ever-changing multitude of qualifications”, many of which “hold little value in the eyes of individuals and are not understood or sought by employers.” The report added that learners, teachers and the public have “long regarded technical education qualifications as inferior to academic qualifications”, and higher level technical qualifications “have too often become

As set out in section one above, the Pupil Premium is paid in respect of children who were looked after by an English or Welsh local authority immediately before being adopted. Children who were not looked after by a local authority in England and Wales before being adopted (e.g. children adopted from overseas) are not currently eligible for the Pupil Premium. A parliamentary question in October 2017 asked the Government if it would allow children living in the UK who were adopted overseas to be eligible for the Pupil Premium. In response, the Minister, Robert Goodwill, said that the Government was “currently considering the educational entitlements of children adopted from care outside England and Wales.” 36

consumption. Graduates are less likely to drink heavily, to smoke and to be obese. Overall, going to university appears to add eight years to your life. A 30-year old graduate is likely to live a further 51 years as against a further 43 years for a non-graduate.12 If we try to value these non-economic effects in financial terms the results are rather striking: the non-economic gains are actually larger in scale than the conventional economic effects. These non-economic benefits do not just accrue to individual graduates but to society as a whole. Graduates are, for example, less likely to commit crime and this feeds through into lower rates of incarceration and prison costs. It looks as if the children of graduates also benefit from their parents’ education and this feeds through into better health outcomes for the children too. 40

In September 2017, the issue of VAT for school uniform was raised in the House: Sarah Jones: Our children go back to school this week, and parents are still paying a fortune for branded school uniforms. Cutting VAT on uniforms for older children would save some £200 million, but this cannot be done under current EU law. My constituents have asked me to ask Ministers to raise this matter whenever the negotiations turn to VAT.

This briefing provides information on school governance structures in England, Northern Ireland and Wales and looks at the main responsibilities of school governors in England. School governors provide strategic leadership and accountability in schools in England, Northern Ireland and Wales. Scotland does not have a formal system of school governance and instead schools have Parent Councils to maintain links with the school community. The first section of this briefing looks at how school governance is structured in different school types in England, Northern Ireland and Wales. The following sections look at the main roles and responsibilities of school governors and some of the challenges associated with the position. Finally, the briefing will look at recruitment and skills of school

These figures provide no evidence that variable fees caused a major ongoing decline or downward shift in overall numbers of applicants or entrants to higher education in England. Similarly there is no evidence that those from ‘lower’ socio-economic groups or (deprived) areas with historically low levels of participation have been adversely affected by tuition fees. The proportion of students from these groups has increased over this period. A report from the funding council concluded that there have been substantial and sustained increases in participation among

Following a consultation, revised Keeping children safe in education guidance will come into force from 3 September 2018. The main difference with the current guidance is the inclusion of a new section setting out principles for schools to consider when responding to reports of child on child sexual violence and sexual harassment. Until the revised guidance commences the version of Keeping children safe in education published in 2016 is still in force and is what schools must continue to have regard to. The final section of the briefing provides further information.

The premium has enabled schools to enhance both the quality and range of PE teaching and sports provision. As a result of this investment, schools reported a range of positive impacts on pupils including increased pupil engagement and participation in PE and sports as well as impacts on social and inter-personal skills, behaviour, and PE skills and fitness. Schools also perceived positive impacts on the skills and confidence of teachers to deliver PE. The findings of this study have also highlighted challenges for the future of PE and sport in primary schools. To sustain the impact of the premium, schools have used it to invest in training for existing staff. However, a question remains over how to maintain this investment in CPD for new teachers entering the profession, once premium funding ends. Schools also raised issues related to sourcing good quality provision in their local area, and may need further support to robustly assess the quality of the provision available. The survey also found that monitoring and evaluation of the premium was not consistent and schools may require further advice and guidance to support them to first assess impacts and then put in place strategies for continuing quality improvement. 23

out various options for reforming loans terms, most of which involve setting the interest rate on loans at the same level as the Government’s cost of borrowing. These options remove some or all of the benefit to more highly paid graduates while protecting some or all of the benefit for the less well paid. He argues that this cut in public spending could improve the economic efficiency of higher education more generally by taking the financial pressure off direct support for institutions, allowing maintenance loans to be expanded to cover the full cost of going to university, increasing fee loans to cover the potentially higher fee cap, extending loans to part-time students and postgraduates and/or loans to students in other tertiary education and training more generally.

In addition, the revised Keeping children safe in education guidance includes a new section on child on child sexual violence and sexual harassment. Reports of sexual violence and sexual harassment are likely to be complex and the guidance does not attempt to provide directions on what schools should do in any particular case. It instead sets out principles for schools to consider in their responses to such reports. Ultimately, it states, decisions are for “the school…to make on a case- by-case basis, with the designated safeguarding lead (or a deputy) taking a leading role and using their professional judgement, supported by other agencies, such as children’s social care and the police as required.” 34

In 2013-14 changes were made to the basis on which ESOL courses were funded. Previously, courses had been funded according to their guided learning hours; from 2013-14 courses would instead be listed on the Qualification Credit Framework (QCF) and providers would get a flat rate for a qualification, regardless of the number of hours offered. As many ESOL courses are short courses and were only awarded a small number of credits on the QCF, concerns were raised that providers could lose funding for their ESOL provision compared to the previous system. Transitional protections were put in place until new ESOL qualifications were developed in the QCF from 2014-15 (see section 1.1 above). A document published by the Skills Funding Agency setting out

The unemployment rate for people aged 18-24 was 10.8% in April-June 2017, down from 11.8% a year ago. 434,000 18-24 year olds were unemployed, while 1.68 million were economically inactive (not in work and not looking or available for work). 3.58 million were in work.