Category Archives: health

Ebacc and ‘well-being’

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Country Life isn’t a magazine that receives many mentions in this blog, indeed, this may be the first time it has appeared here. However, I did note that it has increased its sales over the past four years and that their Christmas 2015 issue recorded bumper sales. The BBC are also running a three part series about the editor and life in the countryside. Last week’s episode had a moving story of the farmer facing bovine TB in his herd of milking cows.

Anyway, this blog isn’t here to sell magazines, but to note that Country Life recently ran an interview with the newly appointed head teacher of one of the country’s private schools; Wellington College. In the course of that interview the new head teacher talked about what are coming to be known as ‘well-being’ lessons. He clearly saw them as an important part of a rounded curriculum. I also recently heard a presentation by a head of department at Dulwich College – another private school – with responsibility for well-being in the curriculum. At that school they also regard well-being as important for the staff members as well as their students.

This set me to wondering whether the DfE sees well-being as an important part of the curriculum in schools funded by the government. My guess is, with the current emphasis on the EBacc subjects, Ministers haven’t really grasped the wider responsibilities of schools in helping young people take key steps along life’s increasingly complicated journey. You cannot train to be a teacher of ‘well-being’, and government has steadfastly refused to make PSHE a compulsory part of the curriculum.

Now, it may be that government thinks this is entirely the role of parents and, while those either with enough cash to pay for private education or able to win scholarships can ask for this as part of the package they are paying for, it isn’t the duty of the State to provide it as part of their education offering. Such a position flies in the face of an education system where pastoral care has always been seen as an important part of education, at least for as long as I have been involved with education.

If government isn’t interested in the well-being of those it educates, it should be interested and involved in the well-being of those that deliver education. Among the many statistics the government doesn’t collect is, I suspect, is one about the trends in occupational health of the school workforce and especially of trends in mental health referrals, as opposed to just days lost through absence. Surely, any good employer ought to know what is happening, at least in the academies and free schools it directly funds.

The obvious starting place for action is the teachers’ workload and especially the twin areas of marking and preparation. An understanding of what is necessary and what is just fear of Ofsted might be a useful place for Ministers to start, rather than concentrating civil servant time and energy on deciding when and where it is appropriate to use an exclamation mark.

Gradgrind was wrong

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The peak period for diagnosis of metal health problems is between the ages of about ten and thirty. For the first third of that time schools play an import part in the life of young people. However, whether they are as responsive to mental health issues as to physical health matters is worthy of scrutiny as the Fooks lecture I attended recently in Oxford made clear.

Dr Ian Goodyer from Cambridge suggested in the lecture that we all have a checklist of what to do if we encounter a cut finger; stop the bleeding, prevent infection and find a sticking plaster. But, there isn’t the same level of immediate in-house steps to dealing with mental health matters. Of course, if the cut is deep or otherwise problematic, you seek expert help. The same is true for diseases of the mind. But, how much do we offer simple suggestions to teachers and others to look for signs of an unwell mind? Thirty years ago Sir Keith Joseph as Secretary of State for Education started the assault on universities rather than schools preparing teachers with an attack on the study of the ‘ologies. I think he especially disliked sociology, but psychology became caught up in the general attack along with philosophy and the history and governance of education. He may have had a point. However, taken to extreme the cure is sometimes perhaps worse than the disease.

As we now teach children in classes, not just the class as a whole, there is a need to know pupils as individuals and not just en-masse. This is challenging for secondary school teachers with many different groups to teach each week. I am sure that trying to do the best for every child has added to stress levels of teachers, as it is much more demanding than teaching to the average of the class.

Teachers are the only group in society working day in and day out with young people going through profound physical, emotional and psychological changes, especially during their teenage years, yet how well do we prepare them for this task?

It would be interesting to see how the different routes into the profession deal with these challenges at the present time? How far do trainees meet with school nurses and counsellors to discuss the challenges young people face during adolescence and how they respond to them. Do we tell teachers to look for self-harming, for eating disorders, and for isolation and failure to engage in class? These are arguably as important as other child safety issues, but while these receive headline attention Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services have languished as the poor relation of an under-funded part of the National Health Service. Fortunately, the Health Select Committee at Westminster has recently illuminated this dark space and Ministers in the Health Department, if not yet in education, have taken some notice.

As a man interested in numbers, I could look at the loss of productivity or the absence figures cited by Ian Goodyer in his lecture, but as a human being I see the tragedy behind the numbers and some of the effects on individuals and their families. If restoring the ‘ologies to teacher preparation saved one young person from self-harm, an eating disorder or a suicide it will have been well worth doing.