According to a UK survey, three in four teachers prioritize students’ psychological needs before teaching once a week.
Teachers are putting in efforts to address the deepening crisis in children and youngsters’ mental health by assisting students in distress as one of their top priorities in the classroom.
According to a UK-wide study, teachers claim they play a crucial role in supporting students’ fragile mental well-being because numerous who need assistance from NHS do not receive it.
75% of teachers prioritize the psychological needs of students ahead of teaching curriculum at least once a week. This sometimes involves breaking from lessons to assist students in distress or making changes in class to assist special needs students. One in five teachers do so on a daily basis.
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According to YoungMinds, teachers believe that an average of 24% of students they teach need some form of support with their mental health. YoungMinds, a charity organization, interviewed 1,002 primary and secondary school teachers.
The assistant general secretary of the National Association of Head Teachers, James Bowen, stated: “Schools are increasingly having to step in and fill the gap left by underfunded mental health services.
“With hundreds of thousands of young people waiting for specialist support, school staff are left with no alternative but to step in and help pupils as best they can.”
One teacher stated that mental ill-health among children of school-going age “is at epic proportions and should be a national scandal. There’s just not enough [NHS] provision. Our children are suffering under a system unfit for purpose.”
Another teacher also said: “We are at crisis point with mental health and there’s no help for these poor kids.”
Nearly 90% of the teaching staff believe they are more involved in providing mental health assistance to students.
YoungMinds also disclosed that:
- 78% of teachers claim students’ mental health has got worse since they joined the profession.
- 76% say only half or fewer of the pupils they believe need mental health assistance receive it.
- 74% say poor mental health support is damaging students’ learning abilities.
The charity’s chief executive, Laura Bunt, stated: “Every day stretched teachers are juggling teaching and supporting pupils’ mental health, taking time away from lessons because young people are in desperate need of help.”
She called the government to “urgently deliver on its commitment to provide specialist mental health support in all schools”.
Another teacher stated: “All my pupils have different lives and different things affecting them mentally. It is difficult to address them all when I am one person in a small team alongside my other duties as an educator.”
NHS England stated that it focused on more than under-18s than the Covid outbreak in 2020. A spokesperson stated: “We know there is much more to do to reduce unacceptably long waits for patients and ensure every young person who needs it can access specialist mental health support.
“We have added an extra 40,000 mental health staff, and plans are in place to ensure more than half of students and learners in various schools and colleges have access to an NHS mental health team in the classroom by spring 2025, way ahead of the original target.”
In March, the children’s commissioner for England revealed that 949,200 children and youngsters were referred to NHS mental health services during 2022-23, that 270,300 were still waiting for support, and that waiting times varied between four and 147 days.
