To think schools aren’t qualified

[Justwanttocomment]

I’m a secondary teacher and had a look over the PSHE topics that I will be discussing in this unit with my students. We will be covering mental health, eating disorders, domestic violence, Peer on Peer abuse as well as other hard hitting topics.

It’s a fairly well planned unit, externally bought presentations to deliver to the kids. I just don’t feel like subjects teachers have the skills to deliver this stuff well to kids. If they raise any issues for students we have no school counsellors and mental health services for kids is virtually non existent.

We need proper funding in schools to fully support our kids with these issues, not a random ppt on a different topic every week!

There needs to be some sort of training for the delivery of this material - they’re really sensitive topics. Young people do need to know this information though and facts via school are the best way to deliver it.
Schools just need more funding - as usual.

Its because schools are expected to take on a role much bigger than they should, we should have proper funding and provision on MH services etc in the community rather than an extended burden on schools.

My DH is a secondary school teacher and we've often had this discussion! We agree that there should be more training on such subjects OP

I do not think it’s fair to put this responsibility on to teachers.

It’s a different topic every week because the content is relatively shallow. No one is expecting you to be a specialist.

Presumably your school has a pastoral function of some kind - in which case each presentation can end with “if any of these issues affect you or someone close to you personally, you can talk to the pastoral team and they will help you find the right help and support”.

Better that state schools acknowledge these problems exist , than not mention them at all.

I was going to say when we did them at school it wasn't an in depth topic aiming to teach everything and to address individuals issues. It was an awareness and to signpost and explain where to turn for help.

Yes, it’s completely wrong. I found it’s very annoying as a parent. The one off training doesn’t cover these sort of things.
As far as I remember when academies started it was exactly the idea that big trusts would be able to employ/access more specialized teaching/support,
f* they do.

26 years' experience as teacher tells me you won't be properly trained or supported but you will be held to account.

Like so many other things in teaching you'll just have your muddle through as best you can.

Give it to English teachers! We end up covering pretty everything through our texts. There was a thread on here the other day about not knowing about work/ tax/ pension etc. The amount of times I've had to explain that kind of stuff when teaching An Inspector Calls....
In fact, I reckon most of the pshe curriculum could be built on Inspector calls:
British values
Substance abuse
Family dynamics
Toxic relationships
Sex
Mental health
Careers

Pshe is basically covering the topics you'd assume parents would cover, but don't always. You can tell the kids in school where they've already had these discussions.

Quick video, mind map, move on.

Sadly if schools don't cover it then many parents won't either... You can't win

Agree. I also recall anyone under allocation on the timetable being allocated PSHE so it's one of those area covered by teachers that really don't want to do so either and despite having resources for it and completely overwhelmed by the possible questions that could come up (former teacher landed with this previously).

Have you ever tried to field questions from teenagers on domestic abuse, consensual sex, rape or drug and alcohol abuse? That is the issue really. We do not have the training to deal with it. I understand it may be better to discuss these issues than not at all but actually sometimes it’s so poorly done that it is best to not tick the box at all.

I get what you’re saying and I know we aren’t meant to be specialists, it’s just really hard when you have kids that are suffering with these issues and we’ve glossed over them in an hour.

It wouldn’t be so bad but the signposts are broken. Heads of year are often teaching staff and dealing with multiple behaviour issues so the pastoral support that they’d like to give isn’t there. Mental health services for kids are practically non existent.

I’d love to know if the American system of having full time school counsellors actually works. Actually, I’d just love mental health services for kids to be properly funded.

Having seen the slides for these types of lessons, a monkey could deliver them. They rarely go into gruesome detail and are mainly slides filled with pictures. The students mainly spend PSHE lessons making childish jokes anyway, I highly doubt anyone leaves with any type of mental scarring.

Any student who needs help just gets added to various waiting lists eg CAMHS and will probably have left school before they get to top of the list

OP I agree, I’ve got a yr11 form and some of the stuff I’ve got to teach in PSHE is really hard hitting. I 100% do not feel properly qualified to deliver it.

The worst of it is the students are under the impression that we are trained to do it.

Some of them are already mentally scarred by the issues raised. Some of them make childish jokes to deflect.

Proper investment is needed because the mental health crisis is just getting more complicated.

Pity there isn’t the funding for these classes to be taken by experts and then these experts can signpost students to the help they need, and they get the help in a timely manner

They need to make PSHE a subject and train and employ specialists.