From policy to practice: a review of whole school approaches to mental health and wellbeing guidance
2025 marks a decade since Government guidance on whole school approaches to mental health and wellbeing was first published. These approaches aim to ensure that mental health is embedded in every part of the education experience.
The Children and Young People’s Mental Health Coalition and the Schools Wellbeing Partnership have long championed the full implementation of whole school and college approaches across all education settings. But are they being delivered in practice?
Our new report, ‘From policy to practice’, reviews the current guidance to see how this could be strengthened to better support education settings. We surveyed a range of schools and the mental health sector to understand how the guidance works practically, and where it could be improved.
Our findings indicate that whilst good progress has been made in implementing whole school and college approaches, gaps remain. Particular principles of a whole school approach, such as working with parents and carers and providing targeted to support to pupils remain difficult to implement. Many schools are committed to creating mentally healthy environments, but they are often held back by limited funding, time, capacity and access to services.
To make whole school approaches a reality across all education settings we’re calling on the Government to:
- Develop a fully costed plan to embed whole school and college approaches to mental health and wellbeing across all education settings
- Review and update the guidance on whole school and college approaches
- Review and roll out the Mental Health Support Team (MHST) programme.
- Ensure that all schools and colleges can train and maintain a senior mental health lead
- Increase investment in NHS specialist children and young people’s mental health services.
- Establish a national wellbeing measurement for assessing the wellbeing of children and young people
