Schools and colleges are encountering more and more pupils and students who are struggling with mental health problems such as depression, anxiety, stress, low mood and uncertainty. Wellbeing deficits are treated in research and policy principally as an individual mental health problem. This forces schools to adopt a care-focused, largely individual approach, which asks too much of schools and leaves numerous educational opportunities underutilised. Adopting a broader approach to reduced wellbeing would create more scope for education providers to contribute to young people's wellbeing, including by devoting attention to meaningfulness and protecting young people against social pressure.
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Background: Education providers confronted with reduced youth wellbeing
Several studies have shown that the mental health of primary school pupils, teenagers and young adults is under pressure. They are increasingly turning to mental health and youth care services, with issues including emotional, behavioural and attention problems, difficulties in dealing with peers, lack of mental wellbeing and psychological complaints, including feelings of depression and anxiety.
Schools and colleges are trying to find a way to respond to these issues. That presents a major challenge, because the problem is complex and a great deal is expected from education providers.
The Education Council is publishing an advice prepared on its own initiative focusing on the question of what education can offer in terms of young people’s wellbeing. The Council shines a light on what policy expects of education and how this works through into the approach taken by schools and other education establishments (referred to henceforth collectively as schools). The study looks at possible approaches to the problems with young people's wellbeing and what they mean for the contribution that education can make to improving wellbeing. This could help policymakers at national level as well as local authorities, school boards, school heads and teaching teams to frame the discussion differently.
Analysis: Current approach to reduced wellbeing imposes heavy burden on educators and leaves educational opportunities underutilised
Wellbeing deficits are treated in research and policy mainly as an individual mental health issue. This ‘individual diagnostic’ approach creates a need for diagnosis and an appropriate intervention by a care professional.
This approach forces schools to adopt a care-focused, largely individual approach. In response, they focus on early recognition and prevention and develop strong care structures designed to offer appropriate support to pupils and students. This demands a great deal of teachers and mentors, who are often the first point of contact for pupils, students and parents. In this approach, wellbeing is seen as a necessary condition for the ability to follow education.
The Education Council explores two other ways of approaching reduced youth wellbeing. In the meaningfulness approach, declining wellbeing is related to a fundamental human question, namely the quest for meaning, of and in life. The social approach places declining wellbeing in the context of broader social trends. In this approach, the cause is sought in the individualised performant society, which places heavy pressure on people without offering them frameworks or structure.
Conclusion: Education has a great deal to offer to improve wellbeing
The Council believes that the ‘individual diagnostic’ approach to wellbeing deficits asks too much of education providers, and as a result the contribution of education itself to young people's wellbeing is insufficiently acknowledged and utilised. Adopting a broader approach to reduced mental welfare creates scope for different ways of contributing to improved wellbeing, which are more in tune with the nature of education.
Education itself can make a meaningful contribution to youth wellbeing
Education can make a significant contribution to young people's wellbeing, for example if pupils and students feel they are seen and challenged, experience success and structure and feel part of a community. Education offers pupils and students space to focus their attention on things outside themselves. It can help them gain a better understanding of the world and people around them, to discover what is important for themselves as individuals and how they are able and want to relate to that world. It can equip pupils and students for their personal and social lives; it can offer a compass to help them judge what is of value; and it can support them on the path to adulthood.
Education can offer space for meaningfulness
Devoting attention to significance and meaningfulness can help pupils and students find their own place and path in life; that is important for their sense of wellbeing. Education can consciously create space for finding and experiencing meaning and dealing with existential uncertainties. Attention for meaningfulness can be interwoven throughout the curriculum, for example in school subjects such as Religion & Worldviews, Art and Literature, but can also be given form outside of lessons.
Schools can offer protection
Schools can offer protection, act as a buffer and, where necessary, keep wider society at bay. Schools can be a safe place and a community, somewhere to ‘be’ and to be together with others. School can offer an opportunity for connection and concentration and can be a place for young people to do something fulfilling, perhaps together with others. A school that offers this can make an important contribution to young people's strength and resilience. The protective space offered by education can also be enshrined in a safe and social school structure.