Asked by
To ask His Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of
the adequacy of support for bereaved children in schools.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for
Education () (Con)
My Lords, losing a loved one is a devastating loss for any child.
Schools can play an essential role in supporting a pupil through
grief and preventing longer-term emotional distress by providing
effective pastoral support and ensuring there is a supportive
school culture. It is for individual schools to decide what
pastoral support each pupil needs. We have invested £10 million
in senior mental health leads training to help schools put
informed support in place, drawing on specialists and working
with families as needed.
(Lab)
I thank the Minister for that helpful and sympathetic reply.
There is clearly a lot of good practice. But recent research has
found that bereavement support in primary schools is varied and
inconsistent. My own family experience reinforces that. There are
long waiting times for counselling, and how schools deal with
anticipatory grief is particularly neglected. One in every 29
children will be bereaved of a parent: that is one in every
classroom. The research shows that teachers and schools are
crying out for guidance and training. Is it not time for DfE to
have national bereavement policy, including a mandatory
requirement for each school to have such a policy? Will the
Minister agree to meet the Ruth Strauss Foundation and other
charities who are doing such formative work on this issue?
(Con)
The noble Baroness will be aware that there is a cross-government
bereavement working group. This issue, as the noble Baroness
understands well, cuts across both education and health, as well
as other government departments—hence our cross-government group.
I would be delighted to meet with the Ruth Strauss Foundation and
hear about its work. This is something we take extremely
seriously, hence our focus on ensuring that schools provide a
truly compassionate culture for whatever is going on for the
children within them.
(LD)
One hundred children every day are bereaved of a parent. From my
own experience, I remember my two nephews losing their dad when
they were seven and nine. There was little to no support from
their primary school, and that is quite endemic to the problem we
now face. Would the Minister agree that we need, as we have
heard, every school to have a policy on bereavement, staff to
have training on bereavement and, thirdly, a commitment to every
school having full-time or part-time professional mental health
support in the school?
(Con)
I am sorry to hear of the noble Lord’s nephews’ personal
experience of this. Of course, many of us in this House have been
touched in different ways by the issues raised by the noble
Baroness’s Question. The Government are doing many of the things
the noble Lord points to. I mentioned training; every state
school is being offered a grant, as are colleges, to train a
senior mental health lead so that we have an effective response
to these issues. Of course, education staff are not mental health
staff in general, and nor are they bereavement or trauma
specialists, but they are very well placed to observe the
behaviour of children day to day and respond to that.
(Con)
Are the improvements to training to which my noble friend
referred being overseen by officials at the highest level, with
just the right kind of approach to these deeply sensitive and
important matters?
(Con)
I am happy to share with my noble friend in a letter more detail
of the training, but it is something the department takes
extremely seriously.
(Lab)
My Lords, when I was still teaching, I was privileged to be able
to attend bereavement training in order to be able to deal with
that in primary schools—although I was part of a peripatetic team
rather than attached to an individual school. Can the Minister
say whether she believes that, actually, there is a need for
peripatetic teams? Not all teachers will be able to be trained to
the same level and, increasingly, they are trained in schools
where the training might be of a variable standard.
(Con)
I do not think we would want to be prescriptive about peripatetic
teams. The point the noble Baroness makes is that schools need to
be aware of what resources are available in their communities to
support a range of issues, including bereavement. Your Lordships
have focused a lot, rightly, on primary school, but I should add
that the department is extending the early years professional
development programme, with the aim of reaching up to 10,000
early years practitioners. That includes a module developed in
partnership with the Anna Freud Centre, which allows them to
identify acute stress and trauma in the children in their care.
Lord McLoughlin (Con)
My Lords, would my noble friend agree that every case will be
different as to how this comes about? While certain guidelines
from the centre would be useful, it is absolutely essential that
there is no straitjacket for how schools feel they should act on
this particular subject, and that there is discretion allowed, so
that head teachers and teachers can best judge how to approach
each individual case, which will not be identical.
(Con)
My noble friend is spot on and has probably put the Government’s
position rather more eloquently than I have. It is critical that
the school creates a culture where children feel able to talk
about what has happened to them and what their feelings are, and
that it can use its discretion and judgment in responding to that
and accessing specialist resources. The Government are supporting
this through our work, and signposting to the Childhood
Bereavement Network, Hope Again and a wide range of other
resources.
The Lord
My Lords, the Church of England educates over 1 million children
in its schools and has produced highly accessible guidance and
training for its school leaders on supporting students and
families through grief, bereavement and loss. Recognising in
particular the barriers to learning and flourishing that trauma
may cause, would the Minister meet with the Church of England’s
education team to see whether these outstanding resources could
in fact help other students, teachers and families across the
country?
(Con)
I thank the right reverend Prelate for the invitation; I would be
delighted to meet with them.
(Lab)
My Lords, as the Minister will know, the Government’s £8 million
Wellbeing for Education Return training programme was launched in
2020, with the aim of helping children to process the impacts of
the pandemic. What is the Government’s assessment of equality of
access to this programme between deprived and affluent areas
across the United Kingdom?
(Con)
I do not have the breakdown that the noble Baroness refers to.
She referred to the 2020 return programme, which was followed by
the recovery programme in 2021. Looking at those two years, I am
aware that 14,000 schools and colleges, out of roughly 22,000
nationally, got those resources.
(CB)
My Lords, the Minister well understands that teachers are faced
with a range of very human situations. Could she use her good
offices to ensure that Ofsted inspections place an emphasis not
just on learning but on the pastoral responsibilities that
schools have, particularly in these very emotionally disturbing
situations?
(Con)
I hear what the noble Lord says. I am slightly surprised, because
I think there has been a real focus by Ofsted on safeguarding in
its broadest sense and the important pastoral role that schools
provide—but I will, of course, take what he says back.
of Hudnall (Lab)
My Lords, the noble Baroness’s answers, and indeed the questions,
have focused, understandably, on the impact on individual
bereaved children. What is the Government’s view of the impact on
the classes of which those children are part? Very often, the
distress exhibited by one child can be transmitted to others, who
often do not fully understand what they are witnessing and
sometimes have great difficulty in managing it.
(Con)
The noble Baroness makes a good point. Indeed, in thinking about
this, I was also thinking about situations which affect the whole
class—for example, where a member of the class tragically is
killed. The very valid point she raised also affects teachers,
not just pupils. I come back to the fact that schools need to
implement a strong, pastoral approach across their school
community, balancing their own insight and the relationships and
trust they have with pupils and colleagues with the resources in
their local community and the national resources that we signpost
and provide.
