£1.5m mental health support package for school leaders

The Department for Education has announced £1.5 million to deliver a three-year mental health and wellbeing support package for school and college leaders, as part of new measures to improve recruitment and retention in the teaching profession.
 
The mental health and wellbeing support package for school and college leaders will provide professional supervision and counselling to at least 2,500 leaders.
 
The Government is also committing to publishing new guidance in the spring on how to prevent and tackle bullying and harassment of school staff.
 
The measures have been announced after consultation with school leaders and teachers around the improvements they believe will ensure that teaching remains an attractive and rewarding profession.
 
Separately, the Workload Reduction Taskforce – a group made up of unions, teachers, and sector leaders – has agreed early recommendations to help reduce teacher workload and encourage education staff wellbeing to support the Department’s aim to reduce teachers’ and leaders’ working week by five hours within the next three years. The group will make final recommendations on how to address the wider causes of teacher and leader workload to government, Ofsted, and school and trust leaders in Spring 2024.
 
The Workload Reduction Taskforce was launched by the Secretary of State alongside the pay award in July 2023. They were initially tasked with finding ways to maximise sign up to the Education Staff Wellbeing Charter – a public commitment to the wellbeing and mental health of everyone working in education – and strengthening the implementation of the 2016 independent workload review groups’ recommendations which looked at on reducing teacher workload in relation to marking, planning and data management.
 
Alongside this, the Department has said it will publish its progress update on the Education Staff Wellbeing Charter – two years after it was initially launched. The update shows the significant progress made on its pledges, including the commitment to: embed staff workload and wellbeing considerations into Government decisions; measure and respond to changes in staff wellbeing; and make sure guidance meets user needs. Over 3,000 schools and colleges have adopted the charter so far.