Tag: Mental Health

In the 2022/23 academic year, 28.3% of secondary school pupils were persistently absent. Huge numbers of children are unable to access full time mainstream school for a multitude of complex reasons. There is growing consensus that this is an issue that is not going away and affected schools, parents and children are under intense pressure […]

Why do some children find it more difficult than others to deal with stress? We tend to think of stress as a ‘bad thing’, but all human lives contain some elements of stress, and difficult problems that must be solved. Although people do have different underlying, biologically inherited basic temperaments, the majority of interpersonal difference […]

There is nothing inherent in human-ness that means teenage bowel movements must be policed. Young people are not innately bad actors for whom suspicion equals due diligence. Erecting barricades that block children from accessing toilets is a visible symptom of a failed system. The fact these ‘policies’ exist across many secondary schools demonstrates a catastrophic failure of […]

This text that follows is the Prologue from the book, Square Pegs: Inclusivity, compassion and fitting in – a guide for schools What if our ‘square pegs’ aren’t the problem? What if they are actually the canaries in the mine, alerting us to the mounting problems in our education system? In her book, Troublemakers: Lessons […]

Abstract We are in the predicament we are with public education because those in charge have failed to apply one of history’s greatest lessons provided to us by Thomas Kuhn. Paradigms compete and failing paradigms do what they can to keep contenders at bay. There are two education paradigms competing, the dominant autocratic model versus […]

We’re facing a crisis in young people’s mental health.  Every day I get emails from several parents, asking if I can help their children.  They tell me how distressed their children are, how they are harming themselves and how they don’t know how to help.  There are so many that I can’t see most of […]

Introduction This essay is for people who steadfastly believe that healthy democracies are dependent upon public education being everybody’s first choice. It is written for those who strive for the open-mindedness John Dewey[1]  describes as follows: “Openminded is the active desire to listen to more sides than one; to give heed to the facts from whatever […]

[A link to the audio version of this article is found at the end.] If you follow the mainstream education debate as avidly as I do, and really here I’m talking about the debate as it plays out largely on the internet – social media and blogs, predominantly, as well as at conferences and in […]

With our youth-led research project, Breaking The Silence, we’re exploring the impact of the UK’s educational system on young people’s mental health and wellbeing. Today we hear from Jaspar Khawaja, a doctoral student at the UCL Institute of Education, who has been collaborating with us in recent months to develop the research. In our previous […]

“Views on school refusal depend on beliefs about children and human rights.” Read the full article here: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/freedom-learn/202002/school-refusal-crime-mental-disorder-or-human-right Published by: Psychology Today Date: February 2020 Author: Dr Peter Gray, Psychologist and Research Professor