Every school talks about fixing children’s mental health. What are they actually doing?
My school has a thousand words on its website about wellbeing. But what does a wellbeing lesson actually look like?
Within the class, we are handed a thick booklet. The contents are labeled “think-pair-share,” “match-up,” and “scenario-based questions.” There is barely enough time to finish it. I write “I will sleep at 10pm every day” in a lesson on healthy lifestyles. The truth is that I am not sure a booklet can reduce my workload and turn my phone off such that I fall asleep at 10pm.
This tension sits at the heart of British schools’ approach to mental health, and it is not unique to my own.
The Department for Education’s statutory guidance runs forty-six pages long. All in the same curriculum, schools must teach pupils about deepfakes, sextortion, online gambling in video games, and the criminal offense of strangulation as well as dental hygiene and how to make an efficient call to emergency services. Teachers are asked to deliver this with general training. For some, it is ambitious, for others, it is burdensome.
A longitudinal study from Imperial College London found that more than three hours of daily social media use was associated with increased depressive and anxiety symptoms in schoolchildren. The World Happiness Report this year concluded that social media is causing population-level harm to adolescents. Five curriculum hours a year on digital wellbeing may simply not be enough, and it is worth noting that few schools have found a solution to improve the actual digital wellbeing of students.
What I have seen work is less obvious and harder to document. For example, the teacher who notices something wrong and escalates it, a chaplain who offers spiritual guidance, or a counselor who keeps an open door. These are not timetabled and structured. They are, in the end, what matters more and makes a difference to students.
The program exists because the regulations require it, and the regulations exist because adolescent mental health is in crisis. The good intentions are not in doubt. The question — one the entire education system is wrestling with, not just any individual school — is whether the compliance of schools teaching wellbeing delivers the appropriate care.
Most of the time, they are trying their best, but I am not sure the booklet is how you get there.
Boarding Pass is a series of dispatches from inside a British fee-paying boarding school.
Aidan Leung is a sixth-former studying at a boarding school in England.
𝗙𝗼𝗹𝗹𝗼𝘄 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗺𝘂𝗻𝗶𝘁𝘆 𝗼𝗳 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗦𝘁𝗮𝗻𝗱𝗮𝗿𝗱↓
