Establishing high quality training provision for senior mental health leads in schools and colleges

The Department for Education (DfE) is offering around a third of all state schools and colleges in England the opportunity to secure a grant to source senior mental health lead training between September 2021 and March 2022 - as part of a commitment to offer this training to all state schools and colleges by 2025.

Further information on our offer to schools and colleges can be found on gov.uk

The learning outcomes for this training are published BELOW, and align with the 8 principles outlined in Public Health England's (PHE) promoting children and young people's emotional health and wellbeing.

To deliver senior mental health lead training to schools and colleges paid for through this grant, you will first need to have your senior lead training assessed against DfE quality criteria. We will then publish for schools and colleges use, a list of all courses meeting the required quality standards.

Applying to have your training course quality assured

Training providers wishing to offer grant funded senior mental health lead training to schools and colleges are now invited to submit information outlining their relevant course(s) for quality assurance.

Your course(s) will be quality assured by the Carnegie Centre of Excellence for Mental Health in Schools, working on behalf of DfE.

All requested course information, in the form of an application for quality assurance, should be submitted to the Carnegie Centre of Excellence by 23 July 2021.

Training providers will receive notification of the outcome and feedback on their application by 31 August 2021.

A list of courses that are successful will be published on gov.uk on 1 September 2021.

For courses that are not successful, there will be an option to re-apply taking into account feedback, and an appeals process will be in place from 1 September 2021.

Additional information: The Government set out a commitment in the 2017 Green Paper, Transforming children and young people's mental health to incentivise and support all schools and colleges to identify and train a senior lead for mental health by 2025.

The aim is to provide a senior person (or person supported by the senior team) in every state school or college with the knowledge and practical skills to develop or introduce their setting's holistic approach to wellbeing and mental health. The knowledge requirements and expected outcomes for the training closely align to Public Health England's (PHE) Promoting children and young people's emotional health and wellbeing (publishing.service.gov.uk) principles to promoting a whole school/college approach to emotional health and wellbeing.

In addition to the commitment to fund senior health leads in schools, the government has announced on 10 May a commitment to additional training and support for mental health and wellbeing for schools and colleges. This includes further support for schools and colleges through Local Authorities, who are being funded to deliver Wellbeing for Education Recovery (WER), building on Wellbeing for Education Return in 2020/21, and investment in training to support improvements in partnership working between health and education through a reformed Link Programme.

This Early Engagement Notice (EEN) is for information only, and the department reserves the right not to enter a formal procurement process and not award contract(s). The information contained in this notice, including information relating to the nature and scope of the authority requirements, the service classification of this requirement from the list of CPV codes, is only indicative of the authority's current thinking and is neither exhaustive nor binding. The authority reserves the right at its absolute discretion to amend it at the time of issue of any further notices or at any other time.

This EEN is not a binding statement of intent; it outlines the Authority's intention to engage with the supply market on an open and formal basis to develop potential options for this scheme if that is what is decided.