1st Joint Report of the Education and Health Committees of Session 2016-17 - Children and young people’s mental health—the role of education

Summary written by Accountability Index from the government's response. It is not the government's own words.

The Government welcomes the Committees' focus on the role of education in mental health and says the report's evidence and recommendations "will be very helpful in informing the proposals to be made in the green paper".

• It commits to publishing a children and young people's mental health green paper "by the end of this year", focused on prevention and access to specialist support.
• On PSHE, the Children and Social Work Act 2017 gives the Secretary of State the power to make it mandatory "in the future, subject to careful consideration"; Relationships Education and RSE are to be mandatory, with an engagement process on content and further details "in due course".
• It agrees partnership between schools and mental health services is vital, and says it "plans to extend" the joint training pilot to more schools.
• On teacher training, it will "look at what might be done to build on" the new initial teacher training framework while developing the green paper. Ofsted responds separately on inspection, saying it will "keep under review" the prominence of well-being.

Read the government's response ↗ Report an error