Improving Mental Health
in our Schools
John Tomsett
Head teacher
Huntington School, York
Achievement first…
‘The effect of achievement on self-concept is
stronger than the effect of self-concept on
achievement…getting low grades causes pupils’
self-concept to decline, which in turn leads them
to achieve less well…the most important thing
we can do as teachers to improve students’ selfconcept is to ensure that all pupils experience
success.’
Muijs and Reynolds, 2011
The Magic of Metacognition
EEF/IEE Research Schools
We need to model
explicitly the mental
processes integral to
learning which we, as
teachers, can often take
for granted.
Exponential equations/graphs
‘The mind is its own place, and in itself
Can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven.’
We uncovered one threshold
which basically said you have
to have made an attempt on
your life more than once
before you get access to
treatment. And these
extraordinary, outrageous
thresholds aren’t in any
way justified
clinically.
I think that on a one to one
level or even on a school level
we should hold the line and
really encourage the young to
get over their difficulties and
not give in to them.
Claire Fox
What the Youth Select
Committee says in their
report is that we would
like our teachers to have
it in the back of their
minds at all times
that we have a mental
health. That is all
they wanted.
Natasha Devon
You are going through the teenage
years which for many generations
have been painful, you are trying to
forge your own identity, you are
trying to get independence from
your parents, sexuality, puberty,
all those body image things, and I
think there is a tendency to
medicalise some of them
in a way that doesn’t
actually help those
who really do need
professional help.
I realised fairly early on in my
adulthood that it was actually
fairly normal to be a bit stressed
and it is actually very normal to
be quite tired, and it is actually
very normal to be a bit
worried about the
future – these are
constants.
I think it’s about understanding
the evidence and taking an
evidence-based perspective,
and sometimes I think the
debate gets looked at from a
political, philosophical or
ideological perspective, which
can be interesting, but we have
just got to get on with the
business of trying to
address this challenge of
increasing mental health
problems in young people.
More than one in four (26%) of
women aged 16 to 24 had
anxiety, depression, panic
disorder, phobia or obsessive
compulsive disorder, as
reported in the governmentfunded Adult Psychiatric
Morbidity survey published in
September 2016…what has
caused that increase since 2004
is utterly unclear. It could be
the rise in premiership
footballers’ wages.
I feel that teachers are
not set up to deal with
this, because the ITT
curriculum does not
include basic mental
health first aid training,
and I think it should. I
think it should be part of
teachers’ training.
STATAA Emotional Wellbeing Score
A student who scores a 7 or higher is considered
to have good emotional wellbeing, whilst a
score of 3 or lower indicates the need for a
structured conversation with the tutor.
Six School Clusters
School Wellbeing Worker
Head of Pastoral
Student Support Leader
Teacher – Student
Structured Conversation
Success Metrics…
‘All I can say is, it’s always
benefitted me to be open.
I think if all of us could
somehow make the leap
together to be more open,
then all of us, the ill and the
non-ill, would be better off.’
A research team at the University of Oxford is looking for secondary schools to take part in a
national research project called MYRIAD: “My Resilience in Adolescence”.
MYRIAD is asking questions around how schools prepare young people to manage their
emotional health and improve resilience to the challenges of adolescence. We will carry out a
comparison of social and emotional learning, which is already being taught in schools, with a
class-based mindfulness programme.
We would like to hear from you if you are a headteacher/SLT at a mainstream secondary school
who’s interested in how to promote emotional health & wellbeing in your pupils.
Email: [email protected]
Phone: 01865 613 164
myriadproject.org
Website:
John Tomsett
www.johntomsett
@johntomsett
[email protected]