Baroness Tyler of Enfield:

Moved by Baroness Tyler of Enfield

462: After Clause 62, insert the following new Clause—“Duty of school governing bodies regarding mental health provision(1) Subject to subsection (3), the governing body of a maintained or academy school in England has a duty to make arrangements for provision in the school of a dedicated education mental health practitioner.(2) In subsection (1) “education mental health practitioner” means a person with a graduate-level or postgraduate-level qualification of that name earned through a course commissioned by NHS England.(3) Where a school has 100 or fewer pupils, the duty under subsection (1) may be satisfied through collaborative provision between several schools.(4) The Secretary of State must provide, or make arrangements for the provision of, appropriate financial and other support to school governing bodies for the purposes of facilitating the fulfilling of the duty in subsection (1).”Member’s explanatory statementThis Amendment requires the governing body of a maintained or academy school in England to make arrangements for provision in the school of a dedicated education mental health practitioner.

My Lords, Amendment 462 is in my name. I thank my noble friend Lord Storey and the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, for adding their names.

This is a very important group. It is about the mental health and well-being of children, something that is, or indeed should be, central to the Bill. It is the name on the tin. My amendment would ensure a dedicated mental health practitioner in all schools qualified to a level—and this is the critical point—that they can deal safely with the problems that are more complex than those currently dealt with by early-Intervention CBT—cognitive behavioural therapy—support, which is currently delivered by existing mental health support teams.

To be clear, I welcome and applaud the Government’s commitment in the spending review to expanding mental health support teams to all schools and colleges in England. These teams work with children, parents and wider school staff to promote good mental health and, funded through the health system, provide effective prevention and early-intervention support for children with a range of mild to moderate mental health needs, including things such as low mood and anxiety. They are doing important work.

These teams are staffed by education mental health practitioners. The terminology can be a bit confusing here, but it is a relatively new role within the children and young people’s mental health workforce system. As these mental health support teams expand, these practitioners in training are recruited for a work-based placement, while they complete a diploma or postgraduate qualification over a period of one academic year. During this time, practitioners are trained to deliver low-intensity cognitive behavioural therapy to children or, in some cases, to parents, to allow them to directly support their children.

While this approach has been effective for children with lower-level needs, CBT is not appropriate for all. Evidence has shown that some groups of children are less likely to benefit from these interventions; this includes those with special educational needs, younger children, and children experiencing moderate to more complex mental health needs.

The problem is—and this is specifically what my amendment is designed to address—that these children with more complex needs still do not meet the very high threshold for child and adolescent mental health services, because their needs are deemed to be not severe enough. In short, they are currently falling through a gap in support, and it is often referred to as the “missing middle”.

In the last 12 months, CAMHS has closed 28% of referrals without offering any support. This results in mental health support teams in schools often being asked to hold cases that they are not trained to work with safely, leaving children at risk. These children include those who are at risk of or have indeed self-harmed, those who have experienced trauma, bereavement or loss, and those who have thoughts of suicide. These things are real; these children are not making those things up. These children are often clearly visible to the professionals within schools and the health service through repeat presentation at health services. Often, they are struggling, not attending school or unable to engage with learning.

It is worth noting that respected voluntary sector providers, such as Barnardo’s and Place2Be, have recommended that, as part of the Government’s rollout of mental health support teams,

“the model is expanded to include provision of funded … school-based counselling”.

They say it would fill this missing middle

“to ensure that all children in mental distress can access timely support”.

A dedicated mental health professional qualified at the right level, such as a school-based counsellor, would normally hold a degree in counselling or psychotherapy. That would improve outcomes for children whose needs are not currently being met and—this is critical—should help to reduce pressure on CAMHS in a cost-effective way. These professionals are trained to deliver a range of different therapeutic skills and approaches that allow them to understand the unique needs of each child. One size does not fit all; I am sure we can all agree on that.

Evidence from other UK nations demonstrates how embedding school counsellors can indeed reduce pressure on CAMHS. In Wales, where school counselling services are statutorily funded, only 1.7% of those accessing counselling need to be referred on to specialist CAMHS. Existing mental health support team staff and school-based counsellors have different routes of training, different qualifications and different skill sets. They each fill a different mental health need and working together could offer more support to more children than is currently the case.

In conclusion, my amendment proposes that the skill mix of the mental health support team workforce should be expanded to ensure that all children have access to an appropriately qualified mental health practitioner as part of the rollout. I very much look forward to hearing the Minister’s response on this.

Finally, I want to express my strong support for Amendment 472 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord O’Donnell, to which my name is also attached, and to Amendment 479 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Watson. I will make a just a few very quick points on Amendment 472. This is a Bill about children’s well-being but, frankly, with very few direct references to the broader issue of well-being and, certainly, without any provisions for measuring well-being. This amendment would provide for a single, optional online well-being survey, delivered annually in schools and with centralised support made available to schools that wished to take up the option.

That is a modest but important ask. School data from the surveys would not be published or used to penalise schools in any way, or be part of the formal accountability systems. In case of any misunderstanding, this would not be a stick with which to beat schools. The survey would be optional. Schools would not be mandated to participate. It would be up to them, as indeed it would be for parents, carers and pupils, to opt out should they choose. However, we know from a recent YouGov poll that 75% of parents agree that, to improve young people’s well-being, we need to measure it. Critically, the data collected would allow the whole system to respond, including children’s services, education, health and the voluntary sector, at both national and local level.

I end by pointing out what I think we all know: happy and healthy children are most likely to be present at school, to engage in learning and to achieve to their full potential. Surely that is what we all want. We have a real chance here to progress that aim. I beg to move.

My Lords, I will speak on behalf of Amendment 472, which is in my name and that of the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, who has spoken very well, and the noble Lords, Lord Layard and Lord Moynihan. This is a modest proposal, but it is probably the most important one. I have sat through all the hours of this debate and I would say to all noble Lords who have spoken that, if this does not go through, they will not succeed.

The reason I say that is that I have not spent over two decades in the Treasury without knowing that you need evidence: you need to prove what works. Your Lordships have talked various things. The noble Baroness, Lady Spielman, mentioned various interventions and wanting to know whether the costs and benefits were worthwhile; that is absolutely right. She mentioned NICE. The key thing about NICE is that it works out whether a given medicine is worthwhile by doing a cost-benefit analysis based on QALYs—quality adjusted life years. We now have more sophisticated measures known as WELLBYs—well-being years.

To understand whether a thing makes sense, we need to do the assessment and for that we need data. Your Lordships have all made suggestions: we want more physical exercise; we want less bullying; and we want to think about what things in SEND work. As the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, said, we need some common definitions. We need a common definition of well-being that we can use; the department can give us that. Then we can work on the basis of exactly how important and how effective all these things are.

If we think about how this debate started, we all talked about our favourite brand of school: free schools, academies, you name it. How do we assess which one is better? Well, either implicitly or, in some cases, very explicitly, it was a matter of exam results or Ofsted rankings. Nobody talked about these schools’ impact on well-being, for the very good reason that we do not know. We do not have data. The only data we have is the world’s most embarrassing data of all, which nobody has mentioned yet: the PISA data. The PISA data shows us that, out of all of Europe, our young people have the lowest well-being. Of the 38 countries in the OECD, where do we come? In 37th place. My favourite football team, Manchester United, is not even that bad in the league.

This is dreadful. We should be ashamed, and we should be doing something. We should be thinking about what interventions are going to make a difference. Noble Lords have all mentioned various things, but we will never know unless we do something about measurement to assess whether they work. The survey, which the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, mentioned, would measure well-being but would also look at the drivers of well-being. It would look at physical exercise, nutrition and all the things that most of the analysis suggests are really important, so that we not only get data on levels of well-being but are also able to do research into what things really make a difference. Then we can start to work out which of the interventions that have been mentioned work and which do not, which is vital. Without that the Treasury will say, “This is a waste of time; you cannot prove to me that this has made any difference”.

This is modest, but it is the most important thing of all. I am not going to give up on this. The Minister has very kindly talked to me about it and the department has come up with some pretty half-hearted measures that do not actually solve the problem. We need a consistent definition. Some 60% of schools are doing something on this, but, bizarrely, they are all doing their own thing. The net result is that they all have different definitions and the data that they are coming up with is completely worthless. We cannot compare it, analyse it or do proper research with it, so we are stuck in this stupid world where we are wasting a lot of money.

Please let us have some common definitions set by the department. I am very happy with that. This will be optional; there will be no burden on teachers. Be Well is doing this in Manchester. It is optional for schools and they and the teachers love it, and they have opted in. It is giving them really useful information and we are beginning to learn about what works and what does not. To me, this is one of the most important things.

I could talk about the benefits in Treasury terms. When we did the sums with Pro Bono Economics on the Treasury’s Green Book supplement on investment appraisal, we worked out that if we were to match the well-being levels of kids in the Netherlands—which we are not going to do, as we are miles away—the equivalent sum in well-being would be £80 billion a year, which is huge. We will only get a fraction of the way to that, because these things take a while to move, but the potential benefits are huge.

I am a former permanent Secretary to the Treasury. The noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, talked about the issue of children’s mental health. If we get someone on the wrong path and they end up in a job that is not very good, possibly go into the criminal system and end up on benefits, fiscally speaking, that is absolutely disastrous. If we get them on the right path, they become great income earners paying lots of tax, which we in the Treasury love. There is a massive difference. The earlier we get at these things, the better. That is why the children’s part of it is so important. We measure adult well-being really effectively, but we do not do that for children.

All I would say to the Minister is that I am happy to help and get involved with officials. This Government prioritise growth. I wish that they had defined it as the growth of well-being for the whole nation, but they have not quite done that yet. If we care about children and want them to grow into healthy, happy and productive adults, we need to start measuring their well-being.

Bizarrely enough, if you look at the cohort studies of people throughout their lives and ask what the best predictor is of someone having a worthwhile, highly satisfying life on their own terms and self-identifying as such, you see that it is their well-being as a child, not their income level or exam results. These things matter hugely. If we get this right, it will be the most important thing we have done in this Bill, but, at the moment, there is no measurement.

My Lords, I shall speak to Amendment 479 in my name. Before doing so, I offer an apology to noble Lords, in particular the noble Lords, Lord Addington and Lord Holmes of Richmond. I added my name to their amendments in the previous group and fully intended to speak in support of them, but I got my timings rather wrong and did not arrive here until the first three speeches had been made. Because of that discourtesy, I felt it would have been inappropriate to contribute on that grouping.

Amendment 479 would not mean a material change for schools and colleges because it aims to make the existing guidance statutory, with programmes and support around that guidance already in place. Previous Governments have acknowledged concern at the worsening mental health among children and young people, with the most significant policies stemming from the 2018 Department for Education and Department of Health and Social Care joint green paper on children and young people’s mental health. That referenced the non-statutory guidance issued in 2015, Promoting Children and Young People’s Mental Health and Wellbeing: A Whole School or College Approach.

I welcome the fact that the Labour Government have continued with this commitment. The announcement from the Department for Education in May indicated that the rollout of the mental health support team programme will continue, with additional funding committed for this year and full rollout—aiming for 100% coverage of schools—expected by the end of the 2029-30 academic year. However, as the guidance is non-statutory, there is a current inequity of access to support for schools that would like more help with improving mental health and well-being in their setting. Most schools will have a trained senior mental health lead who understands whole-school approaches, but that person is often a current member of staff who may be juggling other roles, such as a pastoral lead, a SENCO or a safeguarding lead. Also, many schools may not have further access to a mental health support team until that programme reaches its conclusion by 2029-30.

Additionally, without statutory status, leaders and senior managers in schools may be tempted, understandably, to overlook this approach to improving a school’s ethos and environment when they are faced with a range of other issues, not least the challenges presented by attendance and behaviour. The Schools Wellbeing Partnership campaign group argues that, by improving the mental health and well-being of pupils, attendance and behaviour can be positively affected. This forms the foundation of support for all pupils, so that they can feel a true sense of belonging at a school and can thrive in that school’s environment. Whether or not the current guidance is made statutory, it certainly requires updating; incidentally, that last occurred in 2021.

With that in mind, I want to elaborate a little on the points listed in my amendment on whole-school approaches. There is an old saying: “You cannot improve what you cannot measure”. This relates to what the noble Lord, Lord O’Donnell, just said about evidence. Incidentally, I say to him in passing that I have bad news for him: he suggested that Manchester United are not as bad as seventh in the league table, but it is twice as bad as that, I am afraid. You have to measure before you can begin improvements. Identifying and measuring children and young people’s mental health and well-being will offer the necessary data, which schools can use to improve their environment, their teaching and their support.

I welcome Amendment 472, but a whole-school approach already has the tools to respond to that data. However, the current guidance needs to be strengthened to offer more robust information about schools. Updating the guidance and making it statutory would support schools in turning data into action plans and action plans into improvement, although that improvement will require further training for mental health leads. The training for staff taking on these roles ended in March this year. Perhaps my noble friend the Minister will be able to say if and when that essential training will resume.

Access to mental health support in schools was a manifesto commitment last year, and I commend the Government for wasting no time as that delivery has now begun. That is very welcome, of course, although there is concern that some mental health support teams are not able to provide the support that some specific cohorts of children require in some schools.

Finally, I want to touch on wider aspects of a whole- school approach. The Schools Wellbeing Partnership has long campaigned on this issue and recently published eight principles necessary for that approach to be fully effective. I will not list them just now due to the time, but I am very encouraged to note that all eight of those principles are contained in Ofsted’s proposed new inspection framework, so there is a very good chance that they will soon enter the mainstream. That would strengthen the effectiveness of the whole-school approaches necessary to ensure that children’s and young people’s mental health are taken seriously, and the necessary support is properly resourced. That support is too important to be left to optional guidance and simply must be made statutory to ensure those in need of it get the support that they deserve.

I support the Amendment from the noble Lord, Lord O’Donnell, to which I have attached my name. I have to say that after such a powerful speech—probably one of the best we have had in Committee—I was sort of waiting for the Minister to jump to her feet and say, “Look, I can bring this to an end and accept that amendment. It makes such consummate sense that we need to underpin with data all the ambitious goals we have for the well-being of children”.

What can we do without data? Introducing policies that we do not know are effective or ineffective costs too much; we need data. Nobody is arguing today that this data should be compulsory among all schools. This is voluntary, but I expect virtually every school I have ever visited in the state sector to want to do this, to be party to this, because there can be opportunities to benefit from this as well.

Some of us had the opportunity the other day to listen to the CEO of Lego, Niels Christiansen, who was giving a presentation here in Parliament. He was talking about the work he and his company were doing with young kids—five year-olds in Slough—to get fantastic benefits at an early stage in life by playing with Lego rather than playing online. If you had the data and the evidence that companies such as Lego were doing such good work, more schools would want to do that. Having that information available would be second to none.

I am confident that this evening the Minister is going to be wholly supportive of this amendment. I am not going to dwell on the points that have been made so far, but on the reasons why. How would the measurement we are talking about benefit the well-being of young people? It would promote children’s mental health, enhance learning outcomes, promote fairness, strengthen accountability and build a healthier and fitter society. It would have long-term social benefits. Schools play an absolutely central role in shaping future citizens, and this information would help us foster well-being, which improves social cohesion, productivity and public health. It would help us create a national policy to support the UK’s wider commitments to tackling not just mental health problems but physical health problems and challenges, and it would reduce pressure on the NHS.

This data would support teachers and staff. Well-being measurement data can highlight systemic issues such as high-stress levels and workload concerns that also affect staff and allow us to address them. It can lead to healthier, happier school communities, benefiting both students and educators. Staff can use insights from well-being data to tailor pastoral care and teaching more appropriately and more effectively to the problem.

We can have a cultural shift in education. The more we know what is going on in schools on this front, the more we can do to have a cultural shift. Embedding well-being measurement reinforces the message that mental health and physical health is an important issue and, in many ways for many children, just as important as academic achievement. It normalises conversations about well-being and reduces stigma around mental health issues. This shift helps prepare young people for life beyond school, fostering resilience and emotional literacy.

I can see that the Minister is just about to get to her feet to accept this amendment. But if, in the event, she is just going to pause to reflect because she wants to hear a little more about how this amendment is going to benefit her Bill, her reputation and her legacy in education, I will say this: regular well-being measurement can help schools identify mental and physical health and well-being challenges before they escalate into serious issues. Earlier detection enables timely support, reduces long-term risks such as school dropout, self-harm and disengagement, and preventive Intervention is more cost-effective than crisis management in the health and social care systems.

There can be nobody in this Committee who disputes that having the right data available, and taking a really serious initiative to make sure it is available to all of us working in education, cannot but be a good thing. I totally understand that the Government might be resilient to saying that this should not be compulsory, but this is not an amendment that says it should be compulsory; this is an amendment that says it should be voluntary. Many schools, teachers, heads and parents would want to avail themselves of this information. With this information, I genuinely believe we can improve the well-being of all our children, which is what the Bill is all about.

My Lords, I support Amendments 472 and 479 briefly but very warmly. I will not try Treasury terms, though as a former civil servant, I of course recognise their strength.

Quite apart from the intrinsic value of enabling happiness, which I confess is my underlying reason, well-being has instrumental advantages for society. It stimulates motivation, energy and concentration, particularly for demoralised and alienated children, such as those from minority-ethnic groups who have experienced constant prejudice and belittling, among others. It encourages them on to a pathway of achievement. We know that children from disadvantaged backgrounds and on free school meals are more likely to have lower well-being, as are care leavers. In our credentialised society, improving motivation and raising achievement can reduce the disturbing proportion of NEETs who slot aimlessly into routes to unemployment and crime.

I think well-being is allied to a sense of self-worth—after all, if you feel your world does not think enough of you to value your happiness, you may well feel that you are not worth it yourself. It is this absence of sense of self-worth and self-respect that I noticed most strikingly among the criminals I met when I was a magistrate; also among the children at risk of delinquency who I used to run a club for; and even among a few so-called normal children when I did some teaching; and more recently in encounters with embittered adults whose childhood had surrounded them with prejudice and discrimination. Children can be resilient and can triumph over adversity if they are motivated enough, but the erosion of the ability to cope, which suffering and the absence of well-being causes, has clearly undermined an increasing number.

Well-being has been notably increased by the right kind of design and architecture in schools, and particularly by music education, including singing. There is good evidence for that, but well-being needs to be measured systematically in all schools. This would do much to start embedding a stable culture of resilience and happiness in our schools, so I very much hope my noble friend the Minister will accept these amendments.

My Lords, I speak in support of Amendment 502YG, in the names of the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan of Cotes, and other noble Lords. Your Lordships may well have seen the helpful briefing from the Natasha Allergy Research Foundation, of which I have the honour to be a parliamentary ambassador. For those noble Lords who have not had the chance to read it, I will share some brief highlights, given the hour.

Two children per class suffer from food allergies, on average. If your allergic reaction to milk, cheese, nuts or anything else triggers an anaphylactic shock, you need an immediate dose of adrenaline injected with an EpiPen, also known as an autoinjector. Half of all of England’s schools have not got one—that is 10,000 of them. Two-thirds of teachers have not had any formal training on what to do if a pupil suffers from an anaphylactic reaction or shock—and that is in the buildings outside the home where children are most likely to have an anaphylactic shock, unsurprisingly, since they spend six hours a day, five days a week, 38 weeks a year there.

I am confining my remarks on this amendment to the support of all elements relating to EpiPens and autoinjectors, but I support all of the amendment. Your Lordships can see from my comments that requiring all schools, not just half of all schools, to have an EpiPen and someone who knows how to use it has the potential to save lives and reassure countless parents that their children will be safe at school.

Your Lordships might be wondering why so many schools are completely unprepared for this sort of emergency. Schools have a vital day job to do. It is hard enough teaching maths to children who are not interested—please insert your own least favourite lesson if you happen to be a mathematics enthusiast—so is it fair to load this responsibility on to them as well? I gently say that all that is being asked at this point is that an EpiPen is in the school reception and that there is someone who knows one end of it from the other. I am not joking—I am afraid that there has been at least one incident of a member of staff injecting themselves with adrenaline rather than the pupil in shock.

Another argument which might be used against the amendment is that it is surely the responsibility of the pupils at risk to carry their own EpiPens and of their parents to make sure that they do. This is true, but I imagine that my noble friend the Minister agrees that it is not realistic to assume that every child will follow the rules every day without fail. The evidence shows that pupils are most at risk when they are 15 to 17 years-old, precisely the age when they are most likely to take risks.

I have spoken in this House on this issue before, as the mother of a now 17 year-old pupil who has suffered two episodes of anaphylactic shock. Yes, she has two EpiPens in her bag and yes, I try to make sure that she always does. But just like any other mother, I know that things do not always go to plan. I live with that fear just like so many others.

Shortly after my daughter’s first anaphylactic shock, 10 years ago, her doctor at the Evelina London Children’s Hospital, just across the river, asked for my phone after her emergency treatment. To my astonishment, he then took photos of my pale, limp and silent daughter as she lay in my arms. He explained to us that we should print out these photos and give them to her grandparents, her friends’ parents and anyone else who was a bit doubting that severe peanut allergy is really dangerous, and keep one for her first boyfriend in years to come, so that everyone who might have to treat severe allergies would understand that this is what can happen, and that the adrenaline in EpiPens is life-saving.

It is well worth requiring schools to keep them and for them to know how to use them. They save lives.

My Lords, I will be fairly brief. I mainly want to commend the Government on the restraint that they have shown in this Bill in clauses relating to mental health and well-being.

Despite the Bill’s title, there is a welcome absence of clauses that imply that well-being and activities that promote it are separate from, or even antithetical to, good education. In reality, they are strongly correlated. For most children, well-being is a likely outcome of being well taught, well supported, discovering and developing their wider interests, and forming good relationships with peers and with adults—developing a sense of belonging.

Further, there is a growing recognition that spending too much time talking about mental illness to young people who are not ill can be counterproductive. We may need less mental health awareness training in schools, not more. For those advocating more universal mental health interventions in their amendments, I recommend reading the findings published by DfE earlier this year on the effectiveness of several school mental health awareness interventions. These tests of established programmes found that they did not reduce emotional difficulties in the short term, and in the longer term appeared to be associated with greater emotional difficulties and decreased life satisfaction.

Those who have been around in education long enough may also remember the evaluation of the then popular SEAL programme; I think it was “social and emotional aspects of learning”. This study of the programme, which was for primary schools, showed not only that the positive outcomes expected did not materialise, but also that there was an unwelcome side-effect in that, to paraphrase, it taught the mean kids to be better bullies, using the techniques of emotional manipulation that the programme taught them. These findings are a valuable reminder that sometimes less is more.

A word of warning: much of what is proposed in these amendments is hugely well intentioned, but I am particularly nervous about some of the ideas around measurement. If we do not want measurement processes in themselves to harm children, we should not collect data by constantly asking children who are not unwell about their well-being, and especially about their negative emotions. I have seen so many dreadful examples in schools where even very young children are constantly prompted to express emotions and invited to say that they are experiencing negative emotions. You can see the change; they start to believe they are sad or worried or afraid, where this had not even occurred to them. Nothing could fit the phrase “throw the baby out with the bath-water” more accurately than to make children unhappy through well-intentioned measurement processes.

I therefore urge the Government to prioritise advice from expert clinicians in this field and to allow schools to do only—

I will just say one thing. The noble Baroness mentioned all the things on which she has been able to talk about the evidence because there was data. I just remind noble Lords that this Amendment is talking about one annual survey. It is not asking people every couple of minutes how they are doing, just to be absolutely clear.

Children are very frequently surveyed from different directions; another one would actually add to an extensive load of surveys that they already complete.

The wider point is that there are many ways of measuring indirectly. If we want to measure, we should look for indirect routes that do not involve constantly asking children to self-assess. We should make sure that schools are doing only what is genuinely likely to be helpful for children. The Government should resist the urge to launch crowd-pleasing but ultimately wasteful or even harmful initiatives.

My Lords, I will speak in support of Amendment 472 and everything that has been said by the noble Lord, Lord O’Donnell, and my noble friend Lord Moynihan so passionately. I cannot agree more with what the noble Lord, Lord O’Donnell, just said.

I frequently touch on themes of well-being, especially with regard to sport, physical activity, mental health, inclusion and financial security. The term “well-being” means different things to different people. If we do not define and measure it consistently, we leave it to drift and risk missing the opportunity to improve children’s lives in meaningful and measurable ways.

We all recognise that young people today face mounting pressures, whether increased anxiety or reduced physical activity, yet we lack a consistent national framework for measuring how children are really doing—not just academically but emotionally and physically. That is why I look forward to hearing how initiatives like the Be Well programme are progressing. Be Well is an example of what can be achieved when universities, charities and local authorities come together to prioritise children’s well-being. It can offer valuable lessons on how data, gathered and shared sensitively, can inform targeted support and drive better outcomes. Anything that improves children’s well-being and strengthens the evidence base behind policy has my full support.

This amendment, as we have heard, proposes an annual, voluntary and confidential national survey. It would equip schools, local authorities and policymakers with the data they need to understand and respond to what young people are really experiencing. Better data leads to better policy and ultimately to better outcomes. Back in 2023, Youth Sport Trust chief executive Ali Oliver said that “fewer than half” of children in the UK meet the Chief Medical Officer’s guidelines for the minimum recommended activities. She said:

“This is contributing to a nation where too many children are missing out, have poor wellbeing and lack a sense of belonging. The evidence is clear: unhappy and unhealthy children do not learn”.

Well-being is closely linked to educational attainment. When children feel better and more supported, they are much more likely to engage in learning and reach their full potential. Understanding that connection and measuring it properly is vital.

This amendment would be innovative and evidence-driven, with broad drivers of well-being such as physical activity, nutrition and access to arts and culture. These are all important components for building resilience and purpose, and this proposal ensures that data is shared meaningfully with schools and public bodies, leading to action and not analysis. If we want healthier and happier children, we need this national framework, and this amendment would deliver it, so I hope we can make some progress on driving this initiative forward today.

My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 502YG and pass on the apologies of the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan of Cotes, who has had to go but had agreed to introduce the amendment on behalf of the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Prentis, who cannot take part on the Bill. In summary, the amendment is to improve allergy safety in schools, but it marks the culmination of a long campaign in conjunction with the inspirational Helen Blythe, following the tragic death of her son Benedict in 2021, when he was only five. An inquest last month concluded that Benedict’s death was avoidable and caused by the accidental ingestion of cows’ milk after his school failed to follow the processes and procedures in place to protect him.

As the noble Baroness, Lady Ramsey, outlined, almost 20% of all allergic reactions take place in schools and, sadly, we now know that not only do they not necessarily have the EpiPens but they do not necessarily have a plan or training in place. Only putting these protective measures on a statutory footing will ensure that adequate protections are there for the two children in every classroom with allergies. Helen has worked tirelessly to establish the safety measures necessary to ensure that no child is ever lost again in such a tragic and avoidable way. I also pay tribute to the work of Alicia Kearns in the other place, MP for Rutland and Stamford, with which I am connected. Helen Blythe is her constituent.

The current government guidelines do not even mention allergies. There is only one line on food and one link to an anaphylaxis charity. The key aim is of course spare EpiPens, trained staff and a proper policy. The Government would prefer any change to be by way of guidance, but that just does not give the guarantees necessary—hence tonight’s amendment.

Between 1998 and 2018, 66 children died from allergic reactions. There are 680,000 pupils in England’s schools who have allergies—that is one or two per classroom, according to the Benedict Blythe Foundation’s REACT report of March 2024. At a time when the Department for Education is rightly focused on the attendance crisis, children miss half a million days of education due to allergy each year. These adrenaline auto-injections are life-savers, and the Benedict Blythe Foundation estimates that it would cost only £5 million for the rollout in English schools, plus the training. I remember a similar campaign to put defibrillators into every school; that was done, so why not put these EpiPens, and proper training and policy, in place? I welcome the department’s engagement, but the time for action is now.

My Lords, I want to underline, in respect of Amendment 462, the importance of the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, about reducing the pressures on CAMHS. The family courts are being frustrated, as I know from recent experience, and impeded in reaching necessary long-term decisions about the future for children. They are told, week by week, that they are waiting for an appointment with CAMHS and then that they are waiting for an assessment report from CAMHS—and then that they are waiting for the recommended treatment to take place. If Amendment 462 serves to help with those tasks, children, their parents and the courts will benefit. The courts are being criticised for the delays in reaching decisions, and certainly the problems with CAMHS contribute to those delays.

My Lords, I really want to challenge the assumption of some of the amendments in this group that what we need is more dedicated mental health practices and provision in schools. One of the problems is that there is too much emphasis on mental illness and mental health in education at the moment. That awareness is taking up too much time in school life, is over-preoccupying young people and is becoming a real problem.

If you look at what is going on in schools at the moment, there are indeed endless numbers of staff, volunteers and organisations with responsibility for emotional well-being: mental health leads, support teams, emotional literacy support and assistance, mental health first aiders, counsellors, and well-being officers. If you go into any school, the walls are covered in information about mental illness, mental health and so on; it is everywhere you go. Yet despite this booming, school-based mental health industrial complex, almost, the well-being of pupils continues to deteriorate—or that is what we are told.

Mental health problems and diagnoses are rising at the same time as all the awareness initiatives are taking place. Something is going wrong and that at least needs some investigation, but these amendments just assume that we should carry on doing the same and more of the same. Along with the noble Baroness, Lady Spielman, I think that real, critical thinking needs to be done around some of the awareness campaigns.

I want to challenge the idea that schools are the vehicle for tackling the undoubted spiralling crisis of unhappiness among young people. It is also important that we untangle that from the crisis of CAMHS. There is actually a serious problem in NHS mental health support for children, and I would like that to be taken on. That is very different from the kind of discussion we are having here about schools, which is that mental distress becomes such a focus of all the discussions in schools.

I tend to agree—for possibly the only time—with Tony Blair on this. He said,

“you’ve got to be careful of encouraging people to think they’ve got some sort of condition other than simply confronting the challenges of life”.

That is true. Starting with children, we are encouraging the young to internalise the narrative of medicalised and pathologised explanations and the psychological vocabulary of adopting an identity of mental fragility, and that is not doing them any good. That can then create an increasing cohort of young people and parents demanding official diagnosis, more Intervention and more support at school.

Dr Alastair Santhouse, a neuropsychiatrist at the Maudsley, argues this in his new book, No More Normal: Mental Health in an Age of Over-Diagnosis. He says that it has become crucial to reassess what constitutes mental illness, so that we can decide who needs to be treated with limited resources and who can be helped in other ways. He is talking about the NHS, and he warns that the NHS has buckled under a tsunami of referrals for some conditions. He also says that other state services such as schools are straining to the point of dysfunction in dealing with this issue, and I tend to agree with him.

I admire the passionate intervention by the noble Lord, Lord O’Donnell, calling for measurement and evidence, but one of the problems is that I am not entirely sure we know what we are measuring. There is no clear definition of well-being to measure. The psychiatric profession is making the point that the definitions of what constitutes mental illness are now contended—there are arguments about them. What are you measuring? This woolliness of definitions is becoming a problem in schools.

The counsellor Lucy Beney, in her excellent recent pamphlet, worries that this means that mental illness in schools is leading to a kind of diagnostic inflation itself, as pupils compare notes on what they have got and go to different professionals to ask what they have got and so on. It can create a sort of social or cultural contagion, enticing the young to see all the ups and downs of life through the prism of mental health, which can be demoralising and counterproductive. There is no doubt that too many children and young people are not thriving mentally and emotionally in the UK today, and I would like to have that discussion, but I do not think that well-being and mental health is necessarily the way to do it. Schools are definitely not the places to solve it.

A lot of the well-being initiatives, counselling and therapeutic interventions encourage young people to look at life through the subjective filter of their own feelings and anxieties. That, in turn, is likely to lead to inward-looking, self-absorbed children. The role of education in schools is to introduce new generations to the wonders of the millennia, of knowledge outside their experience, which takes them outside themselves. That is what schools are for. That is what teachers are good at. It is not just about gaining credentials. In fact, I hate the credentialing aspect of it. But if you get into a brilliant novel, the law of physics, the history of our world or evolution, you forget your troubles. If you are constantly talking to the counsellor about your troubles, yourself and endlessly thinking of your own well-being, it is boring, demoralising and stunting. It is enough to make anybody depressed, including the young. It is important that schools do not get completely obsessed with this issue. I fear that they have, and it has made matters worse.

My Lords, first, I want to reassure the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, that the World Health Organization has a clear definition of well-being:

“Well-being is a positive state experienced by individuals in society … Well-being encompasses quality of life and the ability of people and societies to contribute to the world with a sense of meaning and purpose.”

So this is not about self-focus; it is clear that it is about people being in a position to contribute. The WHO goes on to say that a society’s well-being can be

“determined by the extent to which it is resilient, builds capacity for action, and is prepared to transcend challenges”.

Perhaps most of us can agree that that is something society needs to do much better.

I am afraid that I disagree entirely with the contribution of the noble Baroness, Lady Spielman. The noble Lord, Lord O’Donnell, said that the Dutch score particularly highly, along with Denmark, in the recent PISA figures on children’s well-being, and we score astonishingly badly. I was looking at a publication from a few years ago, The Dutch Way in Education. The publisher of that notes how the Dutch system measures not only academic achievement but also the well-being and involvement of students. I can reassure the noble Lord, Lord O’Donnell, that I have raised the study he referred to a number of times. I would like to raise it tonight, but in the interests of the Committee making progress, I will not. Every time we are told how much progress our schools have made, saying, “Look at the exam results”, I say, look at the state of well-being of our pupils. I say particularly to the noble Baroness, Lady Spielman, that if we measure only the exam results, that is what we are going to judge our schools on. That is what we have been doing, and it is what has got us into this position.

Ofsted, where I was chief inspector, took personal development, including children’s well-being, very seriously; it was one of the judgments there. I have never suggested, nor would ever suggest, that academic outcomes were the only thing that mattered for children.

In responding to the noble Baroness, I can speak as a former school governor, and I have my own opinions of Ofsted. I want to put it on record that the Green Party wishes to abolish Ofsted, so that is where I am coming from.

It is important that we speak in support of Amendment 502YG about allergies. I also went to an event with the Benedict Blythe Foundation where I learned about this crucial issue, and the work of that foundation absolutely needs to be acknowledged.

There are two amendments in this group that have not yet been introduced. The first is Amendment 502B in my name, kindly backed by the noble Lord, Lord Farmer, and the noble Baroness, Lady Willis. I am also going to speak to Amendment 502Y, which was tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Willis, and backed by the noble Baronesses, Lady Parminter and Lady Boycott. The noble Baroness, Lady Willis, apologises greatly that she is unable to introduce her own amendment. Like me, the noble Baroness had a train to catch and, while I have now given up on mine, she had to catch hers, so she has departed.

Both amendments focus on the importance of nature in the physical spaces in and around school buildings, and to promote active-based learning and teaching in the school curriculum. It is important to say that far too often that is seen as a “nice to have”—an additional something for schools that have the resources to get money from parents to plant trees, make nice gardens and so on. It is a great pity that the noble Baroness, Lady Willis, is not here because this is something that she has literally written the book on. I am sure that many noble Lords already know that the title of her book is Good Nature: The New Science of How Nature Improves Our Health.

I shall highlight the difference between the two amendments. My Amendment 502B says:

“The Secretary of State shall have a duty to promote school pupils’ access to nature”,

and says there should be one hour of access to nature each week for every pupil. This is something on which there is bountiful evidence. The amendment from the noble Baroness, Lady Willis, is much more limited but still important: it would require a review to be conducted on the benefits of nature-based learning to children’s health and well-being.

I have vast amounts of notes here that noble Lords will be pleased to know I am not going to read out, but it is worth focusing on just one study from 2015 that the noble Baroness, Lady Willis, highlights, focusing on 3,000 primary-aged children in four standard urban schools in Barcelona. The test scores of children who were looking out of the window at green space were better than those of the children who did not have that view of green space. We are not talking here about forest schools; they were normal inner-city schools. The addition of trees and green infrastructure in the playground has real impact on exam results. More than that, there is significant evidence about improvements in anti-social behaviour, levels of mental health and teenage anxiety, and even reduced truancy, something that noble Lords and the Government are very concerned about.

The second part of the noble Baroness’s amendment is about nature-based skills. In other parts of the economy, in the Planning and Infrastructure Bill, we are focusing on the need to look after green spaces in our communities. Who is going to do the work of looking after that? It is crucial that we have the training.

The noble Baroness, Lady Willis, has given me a great deal more information and I feel guilty that I am not going to pass it on, but in the interests of time I am going to sit down now and urge noble Lords to read the noble Baroness’s book.

My Lords, I support Amendment 502YG. I declare my interest as the chief officer of the Natasha Allergy Research Foundation, the UK’s food allergy charity.

Regrettably, we have an education system completely unprepared for the growing numbers of food-allergic children in the UK, with safeguarding standards varying widely from school to school. Recent incidents underscore the urgent need for thorough staff training and well implemented allergen management policies. Food allergy-related deaths, which for the most part are preventable, while uncommon, tragically occur in school.

A few months ago, as the noble Baroness, Lady Berridge, noted, the inquest into the death of Benedict Blythe, who was aged just five, concluded. Today, as we discuss this amendment, I know that Benedict is in our hearts and our minds, as is his mother, Helen. She is the driver behind Amendment 502YG, which would be a critical addition to the Bill.

There are of course excellent examples of food allergy management in some of our schools. However, with two children in every classroom having a food allergy, and one in five allergic reactions to food occurring in school, too many schools lack policies for effective allergy management and staff are inadequately trained. There is also a lack of understanding around allergy in our schools. That all impacts on children’s attendance and puts them at risk.

At the Natasha Allergy Research Foundation, we regularly hear from parents about schools that ignore their requests for reasonable adjustments or, worse still, are dismissive about a child’s allergy. These persistent challenges are faced by thousands of allergy families across the country, and they reinforce that allergies should be treated with the same seriousness and attention as other medical conditions in school settings. That is why, at the Natasha foundation, we launched Allergy School, which offers free practical resources to help teachers create inclusive and safe environments for children with food allergies.

However, charities and foundations cannot deliver change alone. The Government need to do more to help schools and early years settings be better equipped to manage food allergies, from improved staff training to safer food management practices. This amendment would achieve that. It would ensure that all schools had proper staff training; effective policies in place; data—I emphasise that for the sake of the noble Lord, Lord O’Donnell—on allergic reactions, which is woefully lacking; and spare AAIs, or adrenaline auto-injectors.

There are very few chronic conditions that can take a child from perfectly fine to unconscious in 30 minutes, but food allergy anaphylaxis is one of them. Who can disagree with life-saving medication being on site and quickly and easily accessible to save a child’s life? I look forward to my noble friend the Minister’s reply.

My Lords, the hour is late. I have my name on some of these amendments. I simply say that the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health has highlighted that around 16% of children aged five to 16 now have a mental health disorder. CAMHS cannot cope with this. The Amendment in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler of Enfield, is certainly trying to plug that large hole.

I also remind the Committee that it has been estimated that in every class, on average, there is a child who has been bereaved of a parent or sibling. That is not trivial trauma; it is major. They need support and help, but they are often not getting it.

On collecting data, it is essential that we know what we are doing. However, we must use validated measures that have been properly evaluated, so that schools are measuring what people think they are measuring and they do not contain leading questions and so on. In addition, good-quality data allows a school to understand whether it is improving.

I declare my interest as having chaired the Science and Technology Committee’s sixth report on allergy, and I strongly underline all the comments made in it. During that inquiry, we heard about children being bullied by other children who put peanuts in their pockets, and about staff sometimes confusing anaphylaxis with panic attacks because they have not had training. It is a very simple measure to train staff and to make sure that they can access an EpiPen. With that, I hope that the Government will adopt the suggestions in these amendments.

My Lords, I very much support the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, and the amendments she has put forward. I hope that the Government are thoroughly behind the National Education Nature Park, which is a great initiative from the Department for Education, and are looking for ways to push that out, maybe through the natural history GCSE. If the noble Baroness feels in need of a holiday, I recommend Japan as a place that has really got on top of how to get young citizens involved with nature; that may surprise noble Lords, in view of the urban character of Japan, but it is very good at that.

I also agree with my noble friend Lady Spielman that indirect measures are best. They are very much the underpinning of the Good Schools Guide: watching, observing and looking for strong structures and relationships—and, yes, someone to turn to when you do not know what to do, but an excess of mental health professionals is almost always the sign of a school in trouble.

When it comes to children, the Heisenberg uncertainty principle applies. By asking a child a question, you create the answer; you have to be really careful how you try to measure well-being, particularly in young children. Maybe the Dutch can teach us to do it, but I share the scepticism of the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, about much of what is going on in schools at the moment.

I shall add something on those points, although I do not want to drag this on. Clearly, this arouses a lot of emotions, but we are mixing a lot of things up. There are rooms full of evidence on how these effectively work, not least on the things that the noble Lord is putting forward. I do not think that schools are being asked to undertake surveys—it is about giving information to schools, which is a completely different aspect.

What we should all be talking about here is keeping children well, which means intervening when they need help; it does not mean taking them to clinics or overmedicalisation but it is about providing positive environments in which children can flourish. Also, it is not something that we are asking schools to take on; schools have had to take this on, because it comes through the door. We are talking about other professionals —health professionals, youth workers and others, who know about well-being—being able to work with schools to support those children. This is a win-win for everyone, and children and their families are the last ones who want to overmedicalise this and come up with what has been described as an industrialisation of a medical complex. That is not what anyone wants, and I do not think that it is there in any of the intentions that have been put forward.

My Lords, I declare an interest in that I am chair of Sport Wales. I strongly support Amendment 472 in the name of my noble friend Lord O’Donnell, and I agree that it is one of the most important things that we can do. At Sport Wales, we carry out a school sport survey, and we had responses from 116,000 children who gave their opinion on sport and well-being. We do not use it only to focus the funding; it is to help them to be part of the solution, to think about how their well-being might be improved.

I have my name on Amendment 500. I make a plea for physical literacy, and for giving it the same status as literacy and numeracy. We know that, if we teach children good physical literacy skills, it helps their mental well-being. The reason why we need to do this is that we are in a time of crisis. UK Active data shows that we have a generation of children who are more likely to die before their parents because of inactivity. A press release issued by the Department for Work and Pensions on 18 June 2025 stated that one in eight young people is not in education, employment or training. I realise that that cuts across age groups and is looking at something different—but we have up to 93,000 young people between 16 and 24 on personal independence payments. This is not to criticise the Government, but the system is not sustainable in this current format. We cannot keep just pushing young people on to benefits, so we have to do something differently. This group of amendments is part of the solution to helping young people. In a Bill that has well-being in its Title, it would make sense that we measure well-being.

The hour is late, so I shall be brief. This group of amendments has brought out the best in your Lordships. How people have spoken on each of these amendments I have found truly caring.

Stupidly perhaps, earlier on I was saying how the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, made me consider more closely particular issues, but I have to say that on this issue I think she is wrong. For me, the most important thing in schools is not just getting children learning; it is about how they learn about themselves, and their well-being and mental health is so important. The sooner they can get the feeling of a sense of well-being and get any mental health problems sorted, the more their learning will accelerate—not as the noble Baroness suggests. We know that about ourselves; when we feel good about something, we give of our best, do we not? I know that I do. If I feel down and miserable and things are not going right for me, I do not give of my best. So it is important to get mental health issues sorted.

I look back to the days before Covid, when there seemed to be plenty of provision in schools. If there was a pupil with perhaps a behavioural or learning difficulty, you could get the school psychologist straightaway, and the problem would be identified and support would be given. That is why the Amendment in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, is so important.

Again, on issues such as EpiPens, I remember going to—dare I say it—a Lib Dem conference with two friends, and, unbeknown to me, one of them had an allergy to peanuts. She did not eat a peanut; there was a bowl of peanuts on the bar, and she collapsed just because of the fumes of those peanuts. Her friend quickly opened her bag, got out the EpiPen, stuck it in her thigh and she was all right. That made me think, “I need to do something about this at school”, so 12 years ago we got EpiPens in, and all the staff, both teaching and non-teaching, had training. The number of grapefruits we stabbed with EpiPens was quite amazing. But that made me realise how important issues like this are. As we have been reminded, we did the same with defibrillators in schools. Again, that has been life-changing for those pupils who have, sadly, been in a very difficult situation.

I want to just remind myself how I used to love my nature table in my primary class—it was so important to me. Children learned so much from that nature table and I enjoyed changing the items on it.

Finally, this issue of well-being is so important. I found the contribution of the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, inspiring. It made me think. The noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, is right: we celebrate, or we used to celebrate, how we have climbed up the PISA tables for maths and English, or literacy and numeracy. But there is no mention of the fact that we have declined in terms of children’s well-being, which seems wrong to me. I hope that the pitch that the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, gave the Minister about how this would be a brave career move for her resonated with her and we might see some movement on this.

My Lords, as we have heard, this group of amendments focuses on the important issue of the mental well-being of pupils and the roles that schools could play in that. This obviously needs to be seen in the context of an adolescent mental health service which is currently struggling to keep up with demand, and where waiting lists are all too often extremely long, particularly with the rise in reports of poor mental health since Covid.

However, schools already have extensive guidance from the department on how to support both pupils and staff with mental well-being, and there is a mental health hub of resources. The previous Government introduced and began the rollout of mental health leads in our schools, and my understanding is the current Government have continued with this. So I am really not convinced that more duties and standards and guidance, as proposed in Amendments 462, 500 and 479, are the answer, although I accept the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, regarding the range of qualifications one might want to have on a team.

We have also heard that we have some major red flags in relation to children’s mental health and well-being with the use of smartphones and social media and the extraordinary amount of time that children and young people typically spend on their screens. Once again, I urge the Government to address these root causes of isolation, loneliness and disconnection in our society, especially for young people, rather than introducing yet more guidance.

I am sympathetic to the spirit of Amendments 502B and 502Y in the names of the noble Baronesses, Lady Bennett and Lady Willis, respectively. Many schools are able to offer a forest school in primary, but this is something that school leaders need to decide on.

As the Minister mentioned, we introduced the National Education Nature Park when we were in office, with an emphasis on schools in areas with few or no green spaces, and I was pleased when I looked at the National Education Nature Park website last night that more than 3,000 schools have signed up to the scheme. That will give those children the opportunity not only to spend more time in nature but to gather a range of relevant skills, including data capture and analysis.

Amendment 472, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord O’Donnell, would establish a national children’s well-being measurement programme. We heard the noble Lord make a powerful case for such an approach, although I note the concerns raised by my noble friend Lady Spielman and the suggestion that indirect measures might achieve some of the same ends. A lot of questions are put to pupils in the national behaviour survey regarding well-being, including about happiness, how worthwhile a pupil’s life feels, levels of anxiety, loneliness, bullying and more, and I think there is a case for looking at the range of data that is collected. If it does not meet some of the objectives that the noble Lord set out, perhaps we could dispense with some of the data collection and replace it with something more useful.

I was very struck when in office by the approach that is taken in Indonesia—the Committee cannot laugh at me at this hour—in relation to surveys of pupil well-being, which are completely built into its equivalent of an Ofsted framework. It is able to identify very quickly schools where pupils’ well-being is significantly better or worse than the average, which allows it to learn from the best and address the weaknesses of the poorest.

I am not going to speak to Amendment 496 unless someone tells me I should because I do not think that that amendment was introduced.

Finally, my noble friend Lady Berridge and the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy, reminded us of the tragic case of Benedict Blythe. Whether or not we are parents, we can all recognise the heartbreak of the death of a child, particularly where that death is avoidable. The noble Baroness, Lady Ramsey of Wall Heath, rightly pointed out the much wider and more prevalent issue of anxiety for parents of children at risk of an anaphylactic shock. I express my thanks to all the organisations in this area which have contributed to improving the response of schools to managing the safety of pupils with an allergy, particularly the Benedict Blythe Foundation for its work on the schools’ allergy code and the Natasha Allergy Research Foundation for its work on the allergy school. I hope that the Minister will be able to address the concerns raised in that amendment.

My Lords, this Government are committed to improving mental health support for all children and young people to help pupils achieve and thrive in education. We also agree that all children and young people should have the opportunity to understand and connect with the natural world, and recognise the importance of supporting pupils with allergies.

On Amendment 462 on the dedicated mental health practitioner, moved by the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, this Government have announced that we will expand mental health support teams from 52% coverage of pupils and learners at the start of April 2025 to 100% by 2029-30. This will ensure that all schools have access to NHS-trained and -supported mental health practitioners. Additionally, funding of £13 million has been agreed to pilot enhancements to this service to support those with more serious needs; for instance, young people who have experienced trauma or those with neurodiversity or eating disorders. We will look at the experience of those pilots and how they could be extended.

The issue, as other noble Lords have identified, rests particularly in the numbers of mental health staff available to deal with the most acute needs of young people. This amendment would not add to the provision of mental health professionals, although the Government have committed to increase their number by 8,500, but switch responsibility from the NHS to schools. Schools provide a range of pastoral support, including counselling, but managing mental health professionals is not their job. Mental health support teams benefit from being recruited, trained, clinically supervised and having outcomes monitored by the NHS, and there is good evidence of their effectiveness.

Amendment 472, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord O’Donnell, seeks to establish a national children’s well-being measurement programme. The Government are strongly committed to supporting all children and young people to achieve and thrive. To help us do this, we need to understand how our children and young people are feeling. There is immense value in schools measuring, understanding and taking action on the factors which influence whether their pupils attend, achieve and thrive. Around 60% of schools already conduct some type of well-being measurement voluntarily.

We agree with the noble Lord that measurement should remain voluntary for schools. However, we do not agree that a centrally administered survey, costing millions of pounds a year over this spending review, is necessarily the right way forward. We believe in measurement, but for schools to choose to measure, it is important that the tool they use is relevant to them and they can be assured that results will not be used for accountability in an overly simplistic way.

Therefore, we recognise the need for there to be consistency of that measurement. That is why the Government have already initiated a programme of work with similar aims, with measurement experts and providers, including from the Our Wellbeing, Our Voice campaign, and with the education sector. This will involve setting standardised questions for schools to ask pupils, including about their well-being, enabling benchmarking between schools.

We will go further and provide non-statutory guidance, including tools and resources, to support schools to measure in a more consistent and evidence-based way and, importantly, to act on the findings with partners to improve outcomes for children. We are confident that the adoption of a standard set of questions across the sector and publication of operational guidance will better enable schools to share data with one another and other local partners, to facilitate local benchmarking and joined-up community action.

I hear the noble Lord’s point about national collection, and in the longer term, we will also explore whether and how this data could be collected centrally to inform national policy. In the meantime, to further amplify the voices of young people, we have committed to publishing an annual data release containing collated national survey data on pupils’ experiences in school, including their sense of belonging, enjoyment and safety.

Amendment 479, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Watson, would require statutory guidance for schools on whole-school approaches to mental health and well-being. The Government already provide guidance, supporting schools to put in place whole-school approaches. While itself not statutory, this supports a range of statutory duties in relation to teaching, safeguarding, behaviour and special educational needs and disabilities, which are key to identifying need, and working with external services to meet that need. These existing statutory duties, the support already available to schools and the work that we are committed to on the framework, measurement and annual data collection, which I have just set out in response to Amendment 472, taken together, will provide a sound basis for all schools to put in place whole-school approaches and secure the support that their pupils need. I will write to the noble Lord about the specific point relating to the training grant and the Government’s approach to providing additional support for schools to do this.

I turn to Amendment 500, also in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Holmes of Richmond, which would require newly published standards for schools in England on physical and mental well-being; this point was referenced by the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson. Schools already have specific requirements to teach about physical and mental well-being, which are set out in the physical education national curriculum and the statutory guidance on relationships, sex and health education. Ofsted inspects the delivery of these requirements. This approach allows schools to develop their own approaches to supporting physical and mental well-being that reflect the very different circumstances of their pupils. Centrally set delivery targets could not reflect this difference.

I turn to Amendment 502Y tabled in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Willis of Summertown, which was introduced by the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett. It seeks to require the Government to review and report on the benefits of nature-based learning to children’s health and well-being. We agree that all young people should have opportunities to access, learn about and connect with nature. As the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, said, the National Education Nature Park provides opportunities and support to overcome barriers to nature-based learning; I am very pleased that it was internationally recognised at the G20 education meeting in Brazil last year, which I attended. We are also working with the University of Oxford to assess the impact of nature-based programmes on secondary school-age children and young people’s mental health and well-being; I will be happy to share this with the noble Baroness once it is published.

The curriculum and assessment review raised the important issue of climate education in its interim report. We want more pupils, as well as learning about climate change, to learn about and have respect for the natural world. We will go further by finalising and consulting on the proposed natural history GCSE subject content after the review concludes.

In relation to Amendment 502B tabled by the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, I have already highlighted the Government’s commitment to enabling more young people to learn about the natural world in greater depth, as well as how they are supporting this. However, schools themselves are best placed to determine how to use these and other opportunities to meet their ambitions for their pupils, given their curriculums, resources and local environments. We do not think that Whitehall should try to plan schools’ timetables for them.

Lastly, I turn to Amendment 502YG tabled in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan of Cotes, which seeks to introduce mandatory allergy safety policies for all schools in England. Like other noble Lords, I recognise the tragedy of the death of Benedict Blythe and the work of his family to promote this issue; I also recognise the organisations that have worked so hard to bring this important issue to the attention of both us, as legislators, and the Government. When parents send their children to school, it is only right and natural that they expect them to be kept safe. For parents of children with allergies, there is, understandably, an additional level of concern.

We recognise the importance of supporting pupils with allergies, and we will make improvements as part of our plans for a more inclusive mainstream SEND system. We have publicly committed to reviewing the statutory guidance on supporting pupils with medical conditions at school, and we propose opening a consultation in the autumn to test the changes needed to reduce the current risks in the system. The measures to support children with allergies proposed in this amendment could be achieved without requiring primary legislation; we will consider how we might take them forward as part of the consultation.

I hope that, after this wide-ranging debate and with that response, noble Lords will feel able to withdraw or not press their amendments.

My Lords, I thank the Minister for her response to this, as she said, wide-ranging—you could even say “interesting”, in a certain sense—debate. I simply reflect that, in terms of the tone of the debate that we have had, there was a time not so long ago—perhaps a few years ago—when, if you were talking about children’s mental health and well-being in this Chamber, there would have been a certain sort of debate. There would probably have been a general consensus about the problem and what we were trying to achieve, and there would probably have been some disagreement over the best way of getting there.

I have to say: that is no longer the case. As with so many things in this current world, this whole issue seems to have become highly polarised and contested in a way that I find pretty unhelpful, but we are where we are. We can all quote our favourite bit of evidence or research report that backs up our own worldview but, frankly, unless you are looking at these things in the round, that rarely takes you much further forward.

I was pleased to hear the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, talk about the need to look carefully at the root causes of mental health issues. That was a very helpful perspective; personally, pretending that a problem does not exist rarely helps to address it.

I do not recognise that schools have turned into some sort of industrial complex of mental health with an excess of mental health professionals. All I can say is that the schools I have visited are not like that; they tell me what an issue mental health is and how they want extra help and support. That is all I am going to say in general terms.

I will respond to a couple of the points on the amendments. On my Amendment, I was moderately encouraged to hear the Minister talk about the pilots, looking at the enhanced levels of support from mental health support teams. That is exactly what I was trying to get at in my amendment about the missing middle, as I put it. It is about the skills mix. There is a legitimate question to look at there. I hope that that we can return to that point on Report because, according to the people I have talked to—practitioners on the front line—it is important.

There was such a strong consensus. Well, it was not a consensus, but many people in the Chamber could see clearly the case that was being mounted for a national well-being survey—a voluntary survey. No one would be forced to do it. None of it would form any part of the accountability system of schools, but it would be something that those schools could have and use.

Having and being able to use that data will be fundamental if we are to increase the well-being of children and young people in schools. As far as I am concerned, there is no running away from the PISA data that tells us that the UK’s young people have the lowest well-being in Europe and the second worst in the OECD. That is what PISA tells us. We need to do something about it. To do something about it, we need to be collecting that data.

I am sure we will want to think about this again, and about putting it across—the costs would be very modest indeed—in a way that will be acceptable to the Minister and to this Government. Until we have that, we will not be able to address the fundamental problem of children who have poor well-being, are unhappy with perhaps poor mental health, do not learn well, do not achieve, and do not live the fulfilling lives that we all want them to live. However, at this point, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.

Amendment 462 withdrawn.