Almost a third of secondaries are cutting back on the mental health support they offer pupils, with most blaming squeezed budgets, a survey of school leaders suggests.

In the poll by the NAHT headteachers’ union, shared exclusively with TES, 31 per cent of secondary leaders reported that there would be a reduction in the services they provided to protect children’s emotional and mental wellbeing over the next year.

Two-thirds (67 per cent) of the schools changing their level of mental health support attributed this to budget pressures.

Sarah Hannafin, the NAHT’s policy lead for secondary schools, told TES: “Budgets are at breaking point and most schools are having to look at where they are using their funding.”

She urged ministers to “relook” at funding for health and social care services, warning that schools were “struggling to access professional mental health support”.

Reductions in health and social care budgets have resulted in “higher thresholds” for treatment, with schools left to look after children who needed more support than they could offer, Ms Hannafin added.

Wellbeing should be a priority for all schools, but it must be funded

Amber Cowburn, campaign manager at children’s mental health charity YoungMinds, said: “It is really disappointing to hear that such a high proportion of schools are having to cut the services they offer for emotional and mental wellbeing.

“We know that schools are under immense pressure to focus on grades and exam results, while budgets are being cut and headteachers face hard decisions.

“The mental health and wellbeing of students should be a top priority for all schools, given the epidemic of youth mental health issues - but this must be provided for properly with increased funding…The wellbeing of students should be a key part of the duty of a school.”

Strained services

The issue of mental health problems among young people has been rising rapidly up the political agenda. Prime minister Theresa May identified children’s mental health as a key priority for her government and last month pledged to have at least one teacher trained in “mental health first-aid” in every secondary school by 2019.

But the NAHT’s findings provide further evidence of the increasing strain on mental health services available to schools. Only 12 per cent of the school leaders polled said they would be increasing their support for pupils’ emotional and mental wellbeing.

Last week a government-commissioned survey showed that 56 per cent of school leaders disagreed that staff had “good access to a mental health professional if they need specialist advice on students’ mental health”.

And while education unions cautiously welcomed the prime minister’s plans, they claimed cuts to council, health and education budgets had reduced the support available for children with mental health issues.

Waiting lists for child and adolescent mental health services (CAMHS) are often long, with some children forced to wait up to six months between referral and assessment.

Ms Hannafin suggested that health and social care workers should spend more time in schools to ensure that the “middle tier” of students who did not qualify for CAMHS could get help “easily and more quickly”.

As well as asking about mental health, the NAHT survey - involving 148 school leaders and conducted in November and December - also looked at sixth-form provision and the transition between primary and secondary.

More than half of the respondents (55 per cent) said that the new key stage 2 scale scores were less or much less useful than the national curriculum levels they had replaced.

Some 85 per cent of respondents said that their school used its own assessments to provide more useful information about students arriving in Year 7, with 69 per cent reporting that they planned to use these tests in the future.

@whazell