Education

Children and young people go to school to learn and develop themselves. This works best when they feel good and feel safe at school.

Schools and further education institutions can influence this by consciously shaping the pedagogical climate at the school or institution. Well-being promotes learning. But the reverse is also true: receiving a good education promotes the well-being of children and young people; the relationship between well-being and learning outcomes is dynamic and reciprocal.

What do young people say is needed?

  • See me as a person and not just my grades and achievements.
  • Make a structural commitment to students’ mental well-being within education.
  • Train teachers and support them in their role as a trusted confidant.
  • Teach us about our mental and physical health.
  • Be able to be your authentic self, offline and online; you are yourself and not the perfect image. Failure is not an option, but a right.

The action plan addresses this concretely through the following actions:

1 Mental health embedded in schools

Educational institutions have the mental health and well-being of pupils and students on the agenda, recognise the importance of an integrated approach and act accordingly.

Many organisations are working hard to help educational institutions take steps in this area. Together, we are working towards the following goal: Everyone in the school is involved, from management to teacher, from pupil and student to trusted confidant. Attention to mental health is part of the school’s DNA.

How?

Connecting and strengthening existing programmes: Together with various organisations such as Healthy School, pupil and student representatives, municipalities, school coalitions and knowledge institutes such as Trimbos, Pharos and NJI, we are creating a comprehensive approach, each from their own role and expertise.

We make it as easy as possible for educational institutions to choose an appropriate approach. By putting mental health in education on the agenda and connecting initiatives, approaches and policies, we are creating a strong joint course of action towards improving mental health in education.

Raising schools’ awareness and motivating and enthusing them to implement an integrated approach is an important first step. We therefore give leading schools and educational programmes a platform so that they can serve as examples for other educational institutions.

2 Structural attention to mental health

All pupils and students are offered (proven) effective teaching methods and interventions to work on their resilience and mental health.

Learning about your own resilience, talking about mental health with peers and gaining knowledge about good care for your mental health are essential components of young people’s personal development.

They also want to actively work on this at school and in their education. Good teaching programmes contribute to this.

How?

Strengthening teaching programmes: We will promote and strengthen teaching programmes and the Healthy School offering. We will do this by motivating schools to get started through campaigns and personal stories from young people.

There is a wide range of teaching programmes, varying in both type and quality. We are therefore focusing on:

  • Improving the findability and choice of programmes.
  • Emphasising the urgency of starting work on this subject.
  • Improving the logistics and efficiency of the current offering by connecting demonstrably effective programmes and working with partners to scale them up.
  • Translating one-off programmes into a more structural way of embedding lessons about mental health.

3 Training education assistants and teachers

Teachers, educators and education assistants, as well as other employees within an educational institution, have a role in identifying issues and offering young people a listening ear. They feel comfortable fulfilling this role and have received the appropriate training to do so.

How?

Training and education:

  • Future teachers and educators: we will actively draw attention to existing mental health programmes within teacher training and education assistant training, and work with trainers on a plan for structural integration.
  • Current teachers and educators: encourage further training, particularly to enable them to offer a good listening ear.

4 Performance pressure

Performance pressure has a major influence on mental health. Performance pressure does not only come from education and is directly connected to the demands imposed by society as a whole. We dream of a society in which young people have the right to fail.

How?

Together with the Association of Collaborating Health Funds (SGF), we will engage in a dialogue with young people about the current norm in society regarding performance pressure and what the desired norm should be.

In 2023, we will work towards a list of recommendations for educational institutions to address this issue. Armed with these recommendations, we will encourage schools to translate them into practice.

Read the full MIND Us Action Plan here.