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MPs have been told it will take a “heroic effort” to meet the government’s target of having all schools covered by mental health support teams by 2030.

The Department for Education said last week that it is “on track” to meet this target by the end of 2029.

But doubts have been cast over whether this can achieved by an expert witness in a joint session of the Commons Education Select Committee and Health and Social Care Select Committee today.

Experts also told MPs that some schools have not engaged when contacted by mental health support teams (MHSTs), and that others have dropped out of the programme altogether.

In the , the government announced it would expand MHSTs, which provide early and preventative mental health support in education settings, to 100 per cent of schools in England by 2029-30.

Academics who have researched the work of MHSTs were asked by MPs today what barriers there will be in achieving this target.

Mental health support teams for schools

Nicholas Mays, a professor of health policy at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, said more work is needed to engage with schools that are not yet involved in the programme.

Some schools that were previously involved have since dropped out, he told MPs.

This could be because these schools and colleges already had a well-developed wellbeing and mental health programme or because they were “struggling with external requirements”.

“If that target was to get 100 per cent coverage by 2030, then it’s going to be pretty heroic to get there in that time,” Professor Mays said.

Teams ‘spread thinly’

Catherine Roche, CEO of the mental health charity Place2Be, questioned how much teams would be able to achieve, even if all schools were reached.

She said: “I go back to the word coverage. If it’s such a thin spreading and you have two to three hours in a secondary school with all of the complexity and range of needs, what impact can a practitioner really have, trying to deliver a whole-school approach and targeted work?”

In a 50-minute session “you will see two, maybe three, students in a giant secondary school”, she said, adding: “So MHST in the current guise is never going to meet the needs of children and young people.”

The government said last week that almost half of all schools and colleges in England have access to MHSTs so far - with almost 80 per cent of secondary schools covered.

‘Missing middle’

MPs also heard concerns that there is currently a “missing middle” of students whose needs sit between early intervention, which MHSTs have been set up for, and Camhs (child and adolescent mental health services) support.

Professor Jo Ellins, from the University of Birmingham’s Health Services Management Centre, said some MHSTs were adapting to support students in this group.

But she warned that “we do not really understand the size and scale of what we are talking about here”.

She highlighted a “conservative” estimate from the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy that 730,000 children each year fit into this category.

Professor Ellins also warned against MHSTs being expected to provide support to this group without more research into their needs.

She added: “I think to ask them to flex to cover an unknown group that we don’t understand the size, the scale and the nature of, I don’t think is a long-term, sustainable strategy for responding to the mental health needs of children.”

Warning over behaviour policies

MPs were also told that schools using sanction-based behaviour policies could be punishing pupils for their mental health issues.

Professor Ellins said: “If a school really wants to be a place which is a mentally healthy environment for children to be in and to be learning, they need to think about how they tackle behaviour.

“If a school takes a punitive, a reactive, a sanction-based approach, the risk is that if there is an underlying mental health condition, or if the child has neurodiversity which isn’t identified, you’re punishing a behaviour that actually, ultimately, we could be identifying and really dealing with at the source.”

MHSTs ‘can’t support pupils from unstable homes’

The session also heard schools’ perspective on MHSTs from Morgan Flack, a policy officer for the NAHT school leaders’ union.

Ms Flack told the session that the union’s members had raised concerns about an “inconsistency” in the level of support that different teams are providing.

“Some of our members have told us that they have pupils or children that they consider to be eligible, but the MHST doesn’t have capacity to be able to provide the support,” she said.

This can create an uncertainty as to what the school is able to access, she added, saying: “We’ve even had members be told at times that MHSTs weren’t able to support any pupils that had an unstable home life.

“I mean, these are pupils that are likely to have struggles with their mental health wellbeing and could really benefit from that kind of input.”