Mental health awareness within education

Schools and academies have a duty of care to do all they reasonably can to support their staff’s health, safety and wellbeing.

This duty includes ensuring the working environment is safe, protecting staff from discrimination and, where relevant, carrying out risk assessments. 

Proactively supporting good mental health should be of particular importance to employers in the education sector, which has particularly high levels of stress among staff.

The statistics

Education Support is a charity that, for the last 7 years, has surveyed education staff in the UK and produced a Teacher Wellbeing Index. They surveyed over 3,000 education staff for their 2023 figures, with some significant (although unfortunately not surprising) findings detailed below.

• 81% of all staff experience mental ill health symptoms due to their work

• 45% of staff thought the symptoms could be signs of anxiety – compared to 33% of the population of Great Britain

• 39% of all staff have experienced a mental health condition in the previous academic year

• 51% of staff experience insomnia or difficulty sleeping

• 28% of staff thought their symptoms could be signs of depression – compared to 16% of the population of Great Britain

• 35% of staff thought the symptoms could be signs of burnout

Their report also showed that significant feelings of loneliness and isolation are experienced by staff in the sector, with teachers and education staff feeling twice as lonely at work compared to the national population of England.

Here, we look at what school and academy leaders should be doing:

Those with supervisory responsibilities need to have regular training

It is important that those with responsibility for staff members are confident around having what can be difficult conversations and are aware of signs to look out for.

We offer a training course, Mental Health Awareness Training, specifically for senior leadership teams, HR and anyone responsible for supervising others. This training looks at mental health in the workplace, recognising symptoms of mental ill health and considers best practice on how to communicate with colleagues to promote good mental health, as well as dealing with staff members with mental ill health in practice.

Everyone should be encouraged to take responsibility for their mental health

This includes the Head or Principal, senior leadership teams, HR, teachers and all other staff members. Make mental health awareness and supporting good mental health part of your school or academy’s culture.

Again, training can be helpful for all staff. There are some great resources to introduce to your staff; for example, Mental Health First Aid have a really useful resources page that introduces concepts and achievable daily activities to put in place to support good mental health - https://mhfaengland.org/mhfa-centre/resources/

Put a mental wellbeing policy in place

The purpose of this policy is to set out an employer’s understanding of work-related stress and mental health, its commitment to identifying and eradicating sources of work-related stress, and to providing a working environment which supports mental wellbeing.

Having a policy is a big statement to show that mental health is something your school or academy cares about. Implementing the policy in practice and making sure it is part of the culture is really important.

Know what to do if someone is suffering with poor mental health

Training supervisors is an important first step, but if a situation is ongoing or becomes more serious, it is important that those involved know what to do and when it may be appropriate for HR or occupational health to be involved.

If you are a member of a senior leadership team or an HR professional in a school and would like to discuss mental health awareness, what steps to take, how to implement these in practice and/or the delivery of appropriate training, do get in touch. I can be contacted on 01206 217624 or via email at helena.oxley@birkettlong.co.uk