Education policy and mental weakness: a response to a mental health crisis

Abstract

Educationalists have been concerned with the labelling and treatment of children with mental health difficulties in the education system in England for some time. These concerns have centred on the role of policy in ‘othering’ such students as deviant learners. The unprecedented number of children suffering from mental illnesses, has forced policymakers to address children’s mental health difficulties. This has involved the identification of a sub-set of the school population experiencing ‘less-severe’ mental health issues, to be addressed through a suite of policy interventions delivered by whole-school approaches, but targeted towards children situated as mentally ‘weak’. Drawing upon a Foucauldian theory of governmentality that addresses children’s behavioural motivations, an in-depth analysis of a number of educational policy initiatives related to mental health is conducted, that it is argued are fundamentally flawed. This analysis is followed by a discussion of the performative culture of High Stakes Testing in contributing to children’s mental health difficulties. Here it is argued that a narrative of mental weakness serves to justify a neoliberal rationality towards the treatment of children for whom the performative logic assumed to motivate all learners, fails.

Keywords:

• Mental health
• high stakes testing
• Foucault
• school children

Notes

1. However, the numbers of children without SEN statements have dropped from 17.9% in January 2014 to 15.4% in January 2015 (DfE 2015, 3) following the changes in classificatory criteria.

2. More serious mental health cases are directed towards specialist mental health provision (DfE 2016a, 26).

3. There is an argument that Personal, Social and Health Education (PSHE) has also been seen by policymakers as a vehicle for schools to address children’s mental ‘weakness’, given its aims to assert pro-social change upon behaviour, emotions and cognitive functioning, including the key goals of positive self-concept, self-protection, building positive relationships, resisting pressure and stress management (Weare 2004, 90). However, the case is complex given that there is divergence in the ways that PSHE is both viewed and practiced between and across primary and secondary schools.