Children's Mental Health at School: What Good Support Looks Like in 2025

The statistics are not comfortable reading. One in six children aged five to sixteen in England now has a probable mental health condition, according to NHS data published in 2023. Rates of anxiety among teenagers have risen sharply since the pandemic. Eating disorders among under-18s have reached record levels. Self-harm is increasingly common among girls in secondary school.

Parents choosing a school in this climate are not being overprotective when they ask what mental health support looks like. They're being responsible. The question is whether the schools they're visiting are giving them genuinely useful answers, or just the version that sounds good on a tour.

This guide explains what evidence-based mental health support in schools actually consists of, and what questions to ask to distinguish real provision from marketing language.

Why This Matters More Than It Did

A decade ago, the conversation about school pastoral care was largely about academic stress and friendship problems, real concerns, but distinct from clinical mental health. Now the landscape is different. Schools are seeing more children with formally diagnosed anxiety disorders, more referrals to CAMHS, and more pupils who are managing significant emotional difficulty while also sitting GCSEs.

The causes are complex and disputed, social media, pandemic disruption, academic pressure, economic anxiety, changing family structures, but the reality facing school pastoral teams is consistent: more children need more support than before, and the waiting lists for NHS provision mean that schools are often the most accessible point of care.

Good schools have adapted. Poor ones have added a counsellor to their marketing copy and called it done.

What Good Mental Health Support Is Not

Let's start here, because it's more useful than a list of what good support is.

"We have a counsellor" is not, on its own, meaningful. What matters is: how many hours per week, is that person qualified to what standard, how are referrals made (does a child have to ask a teacher first?), what's the typical wait from referral to first appointment, and what happens in a crisis at 10pm?

"We take pastoral care very seriously" is marketing copy. Every school says this. The follow-up question is: what does that mean structurally? Who is responsible for a specific child's wellbeing on a specific day? How would you know if a child was struggling and not telling anyone?

"We have a wellbeing programme" tells you almost nothing. A PSHE lesson on mindfulness once a fortnight and a proper tiered wellbeing architecture are both "wellbeing programmes." Ask what the programme contains, who delivers it, and whether it is integrated into the school day or bolted onto the edges.

What Good Mental Health Support Actually Looks Like

Research from the Education Endowment Foundation, the Anna Freud Centre, and the Department for Education's Mental Health and Schools work suggests several features that distinguish genuinely effective provision from performative provision.

A tiered, whole-school approach

Effective mental health provision is not just about what happens when a child reaches crisis point. It is about what the school does, every day, for every child, to build the foundations of emotional wellbeing and then what happens when a child needs more support than the universal provision offers.

This typically means three tiers:

Universal provision — the things every child receives, regardless of need. Strong form tutor relationships, PSHE education that covers emotional literacy and mental health, a school culture where it's normal to talk about how you're feeling, and staff who are trained to notice early warning signs.

Targeted support — for children who are struggling but don't need clinical intervention. This might be a check-in with a head of year, a referral to a pastoral mentor, access to a brief counselling intervention, or involvement in a small group programme.

Specialist provision — for children with identified clinical need. This requires qualified counselling, clear referral pathways to CAMHS or private therapists, and, critically, communication between the school and external services so that what happens in therapy isn't invisible to the adults around the child.

Named adult accountability

The research is clear that the most important factor in a child's emotional safety at school is whether there is a specific adult who takes persistent responsibility for knowing how that child is. Not a general duty of care shared across a year group of three hundred, but a tutor, head of year, or houseparent whose job includes noticing that this particular child seems quieter than usual this week.

Proactive rather than reactive systems

Good schools don't wait for a child to disclose distress. They build systems that pick up early warning signs, changes in attendance, friendship patterns, academic performance, behaviour, and respond before a situation escalates. This requires staff who know their pupils well enough to notice change, and a culture where raising a concern is easy and expected, not a formal process that feels disproportionate.

Honest communication with families

Mental health is one of the areas where schools most often fail by saying too little too late. Good provision includes clear communication with families about what is happening and why, clear protocols about what the school will and won't share with parents (which involves balancing a young person's confidentiality with parental need to know), and a named contact who can field parental concerns without the parent having to navigate a bureaucratic process to reach the right person.

Questions to Ask on a School Visit

Rather than accepting the presentation you're given, try these:

• "What happens if my child needs to talk to someone urgently — not in a crisis, but just struggling — at 7pm on a school night?"
• "Who is specifically responsible for knowing how my child is doing, not just academically?"
• "How would you know if a child was quietly struggling with anxiety but not telling anyone?"
• "What's the referral process if you think a child needs counselling, does the child have to ask, or do staff make referrals?"
• "How do you communicate with parents about pastoral concerns, and what happens if parents and the school disagree about whether a child needs support?"

The answers to these questions will tell you more than any prospectus page.

What This Looks Like at Leweston

Leweston's pastoral architecture is built around the idea that every child should be known by name, by habit, and by history, not just by the person in front of them on any given day.

Every pupil has a named tutor who sees them regularly and carries pastoral responsibility for their year group alongside the Head of Year. The school's counselling provision is available to pupils without the barrier of a formal referral process, children can access support in a way that doesn't feel clinical or alarming. For boarding pupils, houseparents are trained to manage the particular emotional landscape of a child who is away from home, and boarding houses operate as extended family environments with consistent adult presence throughout the day and evening.

The school has introduced the role of Pastoral Lead, a full-time, non-teaching position to provide students with someone who can support them with issues such as resilience, pastoral concerns, friendship issues and emotional development. Available throughout the day students can 'drop in' whenever they need someone to talk to.

The PHSRE programme addresses mental health, resilience and emotional literacy as part of the school's core curriculum. Staff training includes recognising and responding to early signs of mental health difficulty, eating disorders, and self-harm. And the school's small size means that the adults around a child are genuinely well placed to notice when something changes.

This isn't a perfect system. No school's is. But it is a system that has been designed, not improvised, and that takes the question seriously rather than treating it as a liability management exercise.

The Bigger Picture

Parents choosing a school right now are making a decision in a mental health context that is significantly more demanding than it was even five years ago. The question "what's the pastoral care like?" used to mean "will my child be happy?" It now also means "what happens when my child isn't?"

The answer to that question is worth asking directly, and asking in detail. Good schools will have good answers. And the detail of those answers is worth attending to.

If your child is experiencing mental health difficulties, the resources below may be helpful: Young Minds: youngminds.org.uk | Childline: 0800 1111 | NHS mental health services: nhs.uk/mental-health

Talk to our pastoral team about how we support every child's wellbeing — not just in a crisis. Call 01963 211015 or visit leweston.co.uk to book a visit or speak to the team.  

Leweston School is a co-educational independent day and boarding school in Sherborne, Dorset, for pupils aged 3 months to 18, offering Nursery, Pre-Prep, Prep, Senior and Sixth Form on a single campus.