Schools should have league tables for mental health and well-being to help parents pick, says former headmaster
Respected former headmaster says schools should be more than 'exam factories' churning out 'A* junkies'
MINISTERS should bring in league tables for mental health and well-being to help parents pick schools, a respected former headmaster said yesterday.
Historian Sir Anthony Seldon said schools should be more than “exam factories” churning out “A* junkies” after figures showed almost a quarter of a million youngsters aged 18 and under have received treatment for mental health illnesses.
Sir Anthony, who once ran the leading public school Wellington College, said the measures could help halt the silent suffering of stressed out pupils.
He said school tables that only charted academic performance were one-sided.
Speaking at Tatler magazine’s Schools Live conference in London he said: “It is perfectly clear to me after 20 years as a head of schools that parents will pay more heed to the well-being tables than to the exam league tables.
“They know, even if the Government doesn’t, that schools that prioritise well-being — which includes challenging and stretching students — also build character and help them to perform better than those schools which are just exam factories.
“Focus on well-being and character thus improves exam results: A focus on exam results alone diminishes well-being.
“It doesn’t even prepare students for work because employers want young people with character strengths and personal responsibility not A-star junkies who can’t converse.”
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Sir Anthony, who has written books on several former prime ministers, added: “Running a university now, it has become even clearer to me that by the time students arrive at 18, the damage has been done, and universities are on the back foot. The groundwork needs to be done in schools.”
Figures from the Office for National Statistics, published in September, showed there were 186 suicides of 15- to 19-year-olds in 2015, the highest number since 1998, and up on the previous year’s total of 156.
Nine children aged from 10 to 14 killed themselves in 2015 — the joint highest since records began in 1981.