“Not even Manchester United are this bad” High-profile peer savages UK record on pupil wellbeing
Ruben Amorim is having a tough time as manager of Manchester United. But even his team has a better league table position than does the UK on pupil wellbeing, the House of Lords was told this week. Pic: Alamy.
Cross-bench peer Lord O'Donnell highlights damning statistics from international testing study, in calling for national wellbeing measurement in schools. But government rejects the move, partly on grounds of cost.
A high-profile member of the House of Lords this week highlighted the terrible current record of the UK on pupils’ life satisfaction, as he sought without success to get the government to introduce a national system to measure young people’s wellbeing in schools.
Lord O’Donnell, the cross-bench peer who for six years was the highest official in the civil service, told Parliament that “even Manchester United,” his “favourite football team,” did not have a league table position as low as that held by the UK in the world’s best-known education ranking system.
Arguing that the country’s standing on young people’s wellbeing was “dreadful” and something the UK should be “ashamed” about, he suggesting that measuring it systematically stood to save billions of pounds.
In response, and despite Lord O’Donnell’s intervention coming in a House of Lords session of a bill which starts with the words “Children’s Wellbeing”, the minister Baroness Smith of Malvern said the government would not be taking up the proposal, partly on the grounds of cost.
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By Warwick Mansell for EDUCATION UNCOVERED
Published: 18 September 2025
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Not at all surprised that Spielman was against this her tenure at OfSTED certainly contributed heavily to the decline in teachers' wellbeing. There is little doubt that English children are unhappy at school from the data shared above - it is very likely that this is contributing the attendance issues, why would you want to attend a place that makes you unhappy? Also the increase in intolerant and punitive discipline systems strongly encouraged by the last government and seemingly so by this one with the re-engagement of Bennett. You would have hoped that children's unhappiness would have sparked some changes in policy or approach but there is little evidence of this.
The horror Nick Gibb rained on maths education is a key driver of this.