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Abstract
In New Zealand, schools are implementing a variety of strategies in an attempt to address factors that adversely influence students’ learning. The purpose of this article is to present the findings of a study that sought to determine the extent to which schools were able not only to identify health issues influencing learning, but also to use a health-promoting schools (HPS) approach to address them. The article reports the findings of a survey of 318 New Zealand schools that sought teachers’ perceptions of mental health issues and the strategies schools had in place to address these. It discusses New Zealand teachers’ perceptions of how issues relating to mental health, including relationships with others, bullying and family trauma, impact on learning. It explores teachers’ self-reported awareness of relationships between the elements of HPS and educational outcomes, and identifies a range of HPS strategies that schools used to address mental health barriers to learning.