Teacher Bulletin

This week is Children’s Mental Health Week. This year’s theme is Let’s Connect, raising awareness of making meaningful connections that can help support mental health and wellbeing.

This Teacher Bulletin brings together a range of resources and advice to help children and young people with their mental health and wellbeing.

You can also take a look at the Education Hub for the latest on how the Department is supporting the mental health of children and young people.  

Senior mental health lead training  

Senior mental health lead training helps develop the knowledge and skills of school or college leaders to implement an effective whole school or college approach to promoting and supporting mental health and wellbeing.  

A senior member of school or college staff can apply for a grant to access DfE quality assured training. We encourage you to claim a grant before 31 March 2023 and book to attend a training course anytime in spring or summer academic terms 2023.

Supporting wellbeing to help with attendance

Helping pupils to attend school

We have published new guidance to help school staff, as well as academy trustees, parents/ carers and local authorities support pupils experiencing social, emotional or mental health issues that may be affecting their attendance. There is also further guidance available on supporting pupil attendance, alongside best practice case studies and training webinars.

Guide for parents

Members of the Attendance Action Alliance have worked with us to develop a short guide to help parents understand how they can work with their school and local authority to support their children to attend school and get the right support. Head to the Children’s Commissioner’s website for the guidance and other helpful resources.

Resources to support staff wellbeing

There is also support available to both teachers and school leaders to support your own wellbeing and address challenges around workload. This includes:

Reducing staff workload 

• Developed with school leaders, the school workload reduction toolkit includes practical resources to help schools identify and address workload issues, as well as evaluating the impact of any steps you’ve taken.

Education staff wellbeing charter 

• Co-created with the sector, the Education Staff Wellbeing Charter sets out shared commitments to promote, protect and enhance the wellbeing of staff.  The charter can be used to create your school’s wellbeing strategy. 
• Watch videos featuring staff from Bedford Academy explaining how they have used the charter to embed wellbeing at the heart of the school or read their blog with top tips.

Funded support for school leaders

• School leaders, including assistant heads, can access free one-to-one supervision and counselling, through a funded scheme delivered by the Education Support charity. This support is available to all state funded schools and trusts regardless of whether they have access to a separate employee assistance programme. 

Further mental health and wellbeing support resources

Hear from other teachers and school leaders

School leaders and teachers have recently shared  how they’ve embedded wellbeing at the heart of their school culture on the DfE Teaching Blog:

Claire Lee, head teacher at Burley Oaks Primary School in West Yorkshire, shares how her school is supporting pupil wellbeing to help them as they grow up.

No two schools are the same, and reading about different approaches to the same issue can in incredibly helpful. We asked several schools across the country to share how they’re supporting pupil and staff wellbeing.

Headteacher Louisa Munton, talks about how her school has reduced persistent absences by introducing a new way of communicating with parents. 

Has this email been forwarded to you?

We send out this Teacher Bulletin a few times per half term to school contacts in the Get Information About Schools database and individuals who choose to subscribe directly. It brings together some of the recent advice and information we’ve published. If you've received this Bulletin because a colleague has forwarded it to you and you'd like to get it directly, you can subscribe by following the link below.