Best Schools - Universities can learn from schools when it comes to mental health

The number of students dropping out of university with mental health problems are hitting new highs. In 2016, the number of students disclosing a mental health problem was shown to have risen fivefold in just ten years. Yet nationally, suicide rates have hit a seven-year low. Are universities doing something wrong?

If university life is to be as fulfilling and happy as it should be, there is much more that can be done — and much can be learned by the changes that have occurred in secondary schools over the last decade or so. Many of our schools were slow to accept the changing needs of our own pupils, but most have now learned to adapt to a rapidly evolving mental health landscape.

It is hard to know why, exactly, the number of pupils struggling with mental health has grown so greatly, but few teachers would dispute the reality of the change, or doubt that addressing it humanely and wholeheartedly is central to our mission as schools.

So what are schools doing that universities could learn from? We know that improvements to children’s mental health do not depend solely on successful counselling, vital though this is. Creating a positive atmosphere within a school, a sense that every pupil is recognised and cared for, also has a huge effect on the wellbeing of a school. Even the largest will try to ensure that they are, in some way, a broad and extended family.

Relationships with staff are far more likely today to be based on respect than on old-style adversarial disdain; pupils will often receive one-to-one help with a difficult subject, and have plenty of people they know they can talk to if things are not working out for them. The best schools help their pupils achieve excellent results not, as is too easily assumed, through Gradgrindery and cramming, but through the dedication of brilliant teachers giving personal time and attention to their students.

Communication with parents is more frequent and open; the value of extracurricular activity is once again being recognised by the state, and the number of positions in a school under the “pastoral” heading has increased hugely since the last century.

Fee-paying schools were targeted in a cyber attack which accessed parents' email addresses, it has emerged.

Fraudulent emails sent from school accounts offered a 25% discount on fees for paying quickly via the Bitcoin cryptocurrency.

Newcastle's Royal Grammar School warned parents of the "sophisticated attack". It has been approached for comment.

The Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) said other schools had been targeted and it was investigating.

In an email to parents, the grammar school's headmaster, John Fern, said it had reported the attack to police. Because of the "potential breach of data" in the use of parent's email contacts, it is also liaising with the ICO.

The emails, which included spelling, grammatical and punctuation errors, were sent on 29 December from the address of the school's bursar, who is responsible for fees.

The school told parents it was working with the company that provides its email systems, iSAMS, to "establish exactly what happened". ISAMS said it would be issuing a statement.

Mr Fern told parents the school would "never ask for money or bank details in this way" and apologised.