School support staff leaders have warned that the Department for Education (DfE) is only concerned with helping teachers in its new charter to improve the mental health and wellbeing of school staff.

Public service union Unison says the DfE’s new Education Staff Wellbeing Charter ignores “50 per cent” of staff because it doesn’t mention support staff, including teaching assistants, learning support assistants, caretakers and catering staff.

The charter, published in May to address wellbeing and mental health issues, pledges to drive down unnecessary workload and to measure levels of “anxiety, happiness and worthwhileness” on an ongoing basis, along with job satisfaction and life satisfaction.

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However, Unison says it “only talks about teachers” at a time when anxiety levels in support staff have increased “considerably”, and when they are afraid to speak out about their mental health issues for fear of being singled out for redundancy.

National officer at Unison Leigh Powell told the Commons Education Select Committee this week: “The mental health charter is a very sore point for us. When this was talked about with the DfE for many years, the people involved in it only talked to the teaching and the headteaching unions - they didn’t involve support staff unions - even though we asked to be involved.

“And it was only when it was published that it came out that it suddenly said at the top it was for all education staff.

“But then, if you read through it, what you actually see is that it just talks about teachers. So you’ve got a charter that was actually only developed by, and really only looks at, 50 per cent of the staff that actually work in a school, and that is a huge problem in the first place.”

She added: “We need to remember [support] staff’s mental health as well - not just children’s mental health - which has suffered over the course of the pandemic.

“We’ve done surveys and found…anxiety levels among [support] staff have increased considerably from the first lockdown through the year to the second lockdown. We’ve seen real problems there and we’ve seen different groups of staff affected differently…learning support assistants are the ones that are really feeling it around their wellbeing and their safety in schools; 88 per cent told us their anxiety had increased.”

She added: “Support staff are first in line when redundancies are going to be announced, and many staff fear that, if they tell their manager or colleagues that they have a mental health problem, they will be first in line for redundancy…and that needs to be addressed.”

The DfE has been contacted for comment.