Demonstrate commitment in your development or improvement plan

On this page you can find information about:

• including mental health and wellbeing in your school or college improvement plans

• examples of development and improvement plans.

Context

Improvement plans identify a school or college’s priorities and the key actions needed to make improvements across the setting.  These plans are an opportunity to put mental health and wellbeing at the centre of school and college planning.  Including a whole school or college approach to mental health and wellbeing in your plan displays commitment and helps to make sure that progress is monitored. 

Basing your plans on evidence

Contributions to improvement and development plans should be evidence-based. Ideally, you would draw on relevant performance indicators within your setting, to ensure that you have a clear picture of the mental health needs amongst pupils and staff. 

If there is limited data on mental health within your setting, this may offer an opportunity to start monitoring pupil and staff wellbeing, and to embed this within the improvement planning process.  Once you have gathered some information, you can begin to set mental health and wellbeing targets in your improvement/development plan. 

During this process, it is important to encourage and hear from all voices from across the school or college community, including pupils and parents and carers.  For more information on how to do this visit the Include pupils, staff, parents and carers in decision making page.  Mental health and wellbeing should be included in your planning cycle, so you are able to monitor progress and revisit and revise activities. 

Including mental health and wellbeing in your plan

When developing your plan, you may want to consider:

• what the key mental health needs of pupils and staff are within your setting

• outlining the key changes that you intend to make to support mental health and wellbeing across the whole school or college community. For example, what support do you have in place for pupils, parents and carers, and staff, and how will you build on this annually?

• measuring and monitoring pupil and staff wellbeing, including that of pupils with protected characteristics. This will help to understand the range and level of need within your setting 

• seeking advice and guidance from individuals or groups that represent pupils, parents and carers, such as establishing a Mental Health Action Group

• making your development or improvement plan, and your mental health and wellbeing policy publicly available on your school or college website to show your commitment to mental health and wellbeing 

• ensuring that you have a trained Senior Mental Health Lead in place within your setting.