Mental Health and Wellbeing in Primary Schools

Why develop mental health in primary schools

Mental health promotion involves creating and enhancing environments that support the development of positive mental health, wellbeing and healthy lifestyles. Research shows that  developing positive mental health and wellbeing is most effective when it takes place early in a child or young person's' life.

There is much evidence that pupils learn more effectively, if they are happy in their work, believe in themselves, have good relationships with teachers. A key component for wellbeing to be developed is that children feel safe at school, that school is supporting them and that they belong. 

Outside of school children can be exposed to many factors which can influence their mental health and wellbeing. These factors can help develop wellbeing or contribute to having a negative impact on wellbeing levels. The school environment provides a valuable opportunity for wellbeing to be promoted and mental health to be protected for all children including the most vulnerable and at risk.

The Role of Primary Schools in Positive Mental Health

Promoting good mental health and wellbeing of children is an increasingly important function in schools. Mental health is now recognised as a shared responsibility and most importantly promoting good wellbeing and preventing mental health issues through building wellbeing and resilience and identifying mental health problems early is essential.

Consequently, better basic knowledge of mental health and wellbeing is needed throughout primary schools and in addition school staff require sufficient support, time and resources to develop their knowledge and expertise. Because of this the Department for Education now recommend every school have a senior mental health lead and are supporting schools with a £1200 grant to fund their lead to be trained.

Why is building wellbeing so important for children at school?

Primary schools can be a powerful force in minimising risk factors through promoting and protecting emotional health and wellbeing. Supporting primary schools and educational settings is key to enabling children to promote and protect factors for mental health as they grow up. We do that through cultivating strategies for wellbeing through explicit teaching of a wellbeing curriculum and the implicit experience of the day-to-day experience of wellbeing at school.

Primary wellbeing tree display

Teaching Mental Health and Wellbeing in Primary Schools

Primary schools can provide a safe and supportive environment for building life skills, wellbeing, resilience and a strong sense of belonging to the school. Fostering healthy relationships with peers, teachers and school staff are essential to children’s positive experience of school and their emotional development.

However, how to teach wellbeing, can be confusing, strategies often seem intangible or wishy-washy, often giving 'wellbeing curriculum a bad reputation. Wellbeing can often be shoehorned into a packed curriculum, taught as a one-off or bolt-on or at worst dropped entirely as wellbeing is seen as a waste of time.

Unfortunately in some cases, this can be true, it can be a waste of time. Ususally when the teachers teaching wellbeing strategies don't have a helpful way of understanding that what they are teaching is actually helping develop wellbeing and positively impacting the mental health of children.

This is where positive education comes in, positive education provides evidence frameworks for the explicit and implicit teaching of strategies for wellbeing that protect against the onset of mental health problems.

It's important that Primary schools have a framework for teaching wellbeing strategies that is evidence-based and effective. That is why we help Primary Schools apply the SEARCH pathways to wellbeing framework (Loton and Waters, 2019)

Staff and Whole School Wellbeing are Essential

The needs and wellbeing of school staff are also of paramount importance to facilitate positive interactions and connections with pupils that build resilience in pupils.  Positive mental health and resilience can permeate all aspects of school life and learning. Primary schools can therefore put systems in place to promote mental health and wellbeing, This enables children to have their wellbeing boosted and mental health protected in day-to-day interactions with pupils and staff, rituals and school routines that contribute to a wider culture of wellbeing.  

In addition to knowing it works, research and government recommendations tell us the key to the successful implementation of positive mental health and wellbeing is to take a coordinated whole-school approach.

Worth-it and Mental Health in Primary Education

We develop mental health in primary schools, through a whole school wellbeing approach, staff training and development and targeted support for pupils through our resilience resource toolkits.

We have created our Wellbeing Club Programme (assured by the DfE) that supports school leaders, teachers and mental health leads to develop skills which build wellbeing and promote and protect mental health and wellbeing of children.

Our approach to teaching and embedding wellbeing in primary schools aims to protect positive mental health, enhance the capacity of children to cope with difficult situations and reduces the likelihood that a mental health problem will develop. Other outcomes and benefits of our training include:

• positive relationships with peers and teachers
• a positive school climate
• a sense of belonging
• sense of security and safety
• effective school policies that embed mental health and wellbeing
• opportunities for emotional management and regulation
• opportunities to build habits and set goals that build personal wellbeing
• development of problem solving skills, coping and resilience
• positive mental health of teachers and school staff
• support and professional development for teachers

Developing mental health and wellbeing in your primary school

We pride ourselves on our collaborative and evidence-based approach that has had a positive impact on the wellbeing levels of the children and schools we have worked with.

Although we have been providing direct support for children to develop wellbeing ourselves for several years. We identified that the way to make this work more effective and the best way to support children to develop sustainable levels of wellbeing by making it an integral part of a whole-school framework for developing positive mental health and wellbeing.

Through our DfE assured Wellbeing Club programme you can download and learn how to deliver evidence-based wellbeing resources and access a library of online training that provided practical tools that help you develop the wellbeing of children in your school.

To find out more about our approach to developing whole-school mental health and resilience download our FREE introduction to whole school wellbeing workshop.