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The new Department for Education white paper reflects an encouraging mission to improve young people’s wellbeing, but questions remain about how this ambitious vision will be delivered in practice.
Our mission since we started the #BeeWell programme has been to address the concerning decline in young people’s wellbeing across the UK. Since 2021, we’ve listened to the voices of nearly 200,000 young people from over 325 schools. We’ve taken what they’ve told us about how they’re feeling about their lives, and worked with schools, local authorities, and civil society to address this and make changes to support their wellbeing.
When the long-awaited Department for Education’s white paper, Every Child Achieving and Thriving, was published at the end of February, we were pleased to see strong alignment between our way of thinking, mission and methodology, and the vision and approach set out. A key theme that runs through the white paper and the accompanying SEND reform consultation is around inclusion and belonging, and adopting an evidence-based approach.
These are themes which closely align with our mission. However, some pieces of the puzzle are missing from the white paper, particularly around how this ambitious vision will be delivered and achieved, including:
Responding to critical issues facing the current education system, the white paper sets out the government’s vision for a future system built on principles of inclusivity and engagement. This vision puts enrichment and belonging at the heart of high-quality provision needed to address challenges including the disadvantage gap, the attendance crisis, and the challenges currently facing the SEND system. Since #BeeWell began, our work and research has supported many of the proposed initiatives. Yet, a common theme of inequalities persists – and we must address these for every child to achieve and thrive:
School belonging is central to wellbeing and attendance – but inequalities need to be understood and addressed: Our research on school belonging shows evidence of inequalities across socio-demographic groups:
These inequalities can be partially (and in some cases fully) explained by a range of school-related factors, including relationships with school staff, happiness with attainment, and experiences of bullying. Any strategy to promote school belonging MUST address these inequalities and their drivers, particularly for young people with SEND. Doing so will help improve pupils’ sense of school belonging, in turn supporting their wellbeing and attendance at school.
Creative health approaches can support wellbeing but access must be equitable: #BeeWell research consistently shows that participation in arts, culture, entertainment and sport is associated with higher levels of wellbeing for young people, but we also find that LGBTQ+ young people and those from socioeconomically disadvantaged backgrounds are more likely to report generally low patterns of engagement in some activities. We welcome the DfE’s commitment to halving the gap in participation in enriching activities and the introduction of enrichment benchmarks, but there are entrenched inequalities in access among certain groups. Simply providing more enriching activities is unlikely to solve this. The DfE and schools will need to understand young people’s views, barriers and experiences to achieve genuine participation for all.
2. Building an evidence infrastructure that embeds young people’s voices and is meaningful and usable
The proposed Pupil Engagement Framework has real potential, but to be effective needs to cover the right issues and enable the results to be segmented by more than just year group. The proposal to move from an omnibus survey that provides a snapshot of a few thousand pupils nationally to a core set of survey items to be asked in every school on an annual basis is welcome. To be effective in helping all children to achieve and thrive, however, it ought to:
Crucially there needs to be a mechanism for comparative data and local and regional level information. If not, the utility risks being limited.
Listening to the perspectives of young people with SEND
The Pupil Engagement Framework must also be implemented in ways that are inclusive of all young people. Historically, the voices of children and young people with SEND have been underrepresented in research and policy decision-making. It is therefore essential that their voices are listened to in genuinely inclusive ways. This may involve adapting surveys, using qualitative methods, and developing meaningful approaches to include those who experience barriers to participating in standard survey methods, ensuring their experiences are not overlooked. #BeeWell researchers have conducted a recent study exploring the perspectives of young people with SEND on school-based wellbeing surveys. The study recommends that schools should clearly communicate the purpose and outcomes of such surveys, explain what happens with their data, and ensure that young people are able to opt-out of completing surveys.
3. Looking beyond the school gates and taking a systems approach
Schools do not work in isolation to enable children and young people to thrive and achieve – this comes from a joined-up approach which considers young people as part of their wider community and environment. When young people do not have places to go, when they don’t feel safe in their community, or when they don’t have access to the opportunities that some of their peers do, the effects can show up at school, in terms of behaviour, engagement, achievement and wellbeing. To address these effects, we need to look beyond the school gates. The white paper points to a new model of local partnerships and shared accountability for children’s outcomes, with plans for Mission Coastal and Mission North-East to use place-based collaboration to tackle structural inequalities. The aim is to develop a blueprint for national change. This systems-level approach has been central to #BeeWell from the start.
Communities acting on the data: through conversations with young people about the #BeeWell data, we’ve gained a thorough understanding of why community is so important for young people’s wellbeing. They told us that community shapes who they are, and connects to their relationships with school. But for some young people, this sense of community is missing:
Listening to young people to gain insights like this is invaluable for addressing the issues facing young people, whether they are in school or in their local community.
Sharing insights with local partners to drive change: Underpinning our approach to working with the wider community within which schools operate and where young people live and socialise, is a commitment to aggregating and sharing anonymised data by local neighbourhood. This gives local authorities, charities and partners working in these areas granular insights into what’s happening on the ground and where interventions and programmes can be best targeted to improve young people’s wellbeing and enable them to thrive. In this way, data can be used to support initiatives from social prescribing, to youth led programmes and activities in response to local data, to working with partners to design and deliver programmes that support young people’s wellbeing.
4. The challenging reality of inclusion in mainstream: potential and caution for SEND reform
We welcome the focus on increasing inclusion within mainstream schools and the development of new “National Inclusion Standards” to guide the identification of need and delivery of effective support. These standards are expected to be evidence-informed, defining what constitutes good “ordinarily available provision”, with the government aiming to establish a robust evidence base by 2028.
The white paper also highlights the importance of sharing best practice from special schools with mainstream settings. Evidence from our SEND research supports this, indicating that compared to their peers in mainstream schools, young people in special schools often report:
Non-mainstream settings can offer valuable insights into how educational environments can be structured to help young people with SEND thrive. However, as the system moves towards greater inclusion and potentially fewer placements in special schools, care must be taken to prioritise wellbeing. There is a risk that young people with SEND may experience increased stress or anxiety, particularly in relation to academic expectations. A narrow focus on “closing the gap” or meeting national benchmarks may be not appropriate for all young people with SEND. Evidence from #BeeWell supports this, showing that happiness with attainment is often higher among those in special schools than those with SEND in mainstream settings. Progress should therefore be measured in relation to the individual, with provision focused on meeting needs, supporting wellbeing, and enabling meaningful personal as well as academic development. Any increased focus on including more SEND pupils in mainstream settings, with the focus to improve their academic outcomes must not come at the expense of the benefits towards their mental health and wellbeing that they experience in non-mainstream settings.
Evidence-based SEND support: a positive direction
The introduction of Specialist Provision Packages is a central element of the proposed reforms, with these packages intended to form the basis of future Education, Health and Care Plans (EHCPs) for children and young people with the most complex needs. Oversight will be provided by an independent expert panel, although further clarity is needed on what types of evidence will be collected and how effectiveness will be assessed. In particular, measurement of children and young people’s wellbeing should be included as a core component of this evidence base.
While these packages have the potential to improve the consistency and clarity of provision, there are questions about how far they will be able to reflect the diversity and complexity of individual needs. If they are defined too rigidly, some children and young people may not fit easily within them, potentially limiting how responsive the support can be. The proposed shift towards needs-led provision, where support is based on individual needs rather than diagnostic categories, is therefore a particularly important and positive development. Evidence of variation in wellbeing among young people with SEND, especially among those who may lack appropriate assessment or have multiple needs, supports the case for more flexible and tailored approaches that respond to individual circumstances.
Overall, the white paper and SEND proposals represent a significant shift towards a more inclusive and evidence-informed education system. Their success will depend on a sustained commitment to tackling inequalities, developing a usable evidence infrastructure, and meaningfully including the voices of children and young people – including those with SEND – in both design and evaluation to ensure provision is genuinely responsive to individual needs. Achieving this requires an evidence-based approach which captures meaningful and usable data across children and young people’s lives, both in and beyond school. These must in turn be underpinned with effective measures and support for teachers and school staff who are already under pressure. Our partners at Anna Freud explore what inclusion needs to include in further detail in this blog post.
