National pupil wellbeing survey needed to help schools understand causes of persistent absence and exclusion, conference hears

Calls for pupil wellbeing statistics to be collected as we do for many other aspects of schooling.

School leaders are “flying blind” without measures of their pupils’ mental health, to help them understand the context which might be behind a pupil’s absence from school, or their misbehaviour, a headteacher told a national conference on the subject this morning.

The conference, on introducing a national measurement system for children’s wellbeing, heard that there was a gap in the system currently.

For while England had among the most detailed pupil-level datasets in the world, providing statistics ranging from attainment to attendance and exclusions, there was no systematic national measurement of the state of young people’s mental health. This is despite growing evidence that the country is faring poorly, based on what data is available.