Why schools must think of education and well-being as inseparable

Unfortunately, it must be said that the care situation has been lacking for a very long time. And of course, the poor care situation has deteriorated even further due to the COVID-19 pandemic and other crises. Especially in rural areas. There were also no reserves or buffers in this system. Those who used to wait a long time for help, for an appointment with a school psychologist or for a place in therapy, now have to wait even longer. Unfortunately, the issues children and young people face do not play a big role in our society. This is a major problem from an overall perspective, as we know very clearly from research studies that most mental illnesses begin in childhood and adolescence all the way up to early adulthood and then continue throughout life.

...yes, and the narrative often goes like this: It wasn't easy in the past and it wasn't a problem then either. This suggests children used to grow up mentally healthy and that although there were stresses and strains, these stresses didn't actually cause any major problems. Or in other words, people didn't care and that was okay. But if we now look at this particular group of adults in our society, we have incredibly high numbers of people who are not only mentally ill, but who are also taking psychopharmaceuticals. And that tells us a lot about the past – and that everything was not in order.

I believe we need to think much more systemically. If we consider mental health and well-being, this means that we have to shape the way children and young people grow up and their living conditions – including at school – so that they have the opportunity to grow up in a mentally healthy way. We need staff for this. Teachers in schools and daycare centers play at least as central a role as therapists, because they help children and young people grow up in a mentally healthy way. Many hours a day. And this applies in particular to children who do not have a resource-rich home. They are dependent on their environment for help.

The German School Barometer has shown that teachers are increasingly noticing behavioral problems such as anxiety, trouble concentrating and restlessness among pupils. These are impressions and reports from everyday school life. What we don't have is data to explain these impressions: How are children and young people doing overall, also in schools? How do they access care and what care structures are in place? There are no studies on how many children and young people actually suffer from mental illness. It is actually the responsibility of the state to remedy this. But that is not happening at the moment. We have been measuring learning outcomes in the Pisa study for over 20 years, but we don't measure how children and young people are doing psychologically at school at all. And that is absurd! We also need to map the care situation to make it clear: Children are not only burdened, they also can’t find help.

I think our big mistake is that school is seen as a process people go through to achieve learning growth and learning skills. The main goal is to achieve grades. And in doing so, we ignore the individual requirements children and young people require to carry out this learning process well. And in many areas, schools do not feel responsible for this – because the task of schools is seen primarily as academic learning. But the aim of good teaching must be to bring well-being in harmony with learning growth. In our school system, no-one is concerned about a child who performs very well at school but is stressed and has trouble sleeping. As long as their performance is fine, it's not a problem. And that is precarious. Because it shows that this system does not consider this very important variable, the mental health of our children and young people.

Absolutely. It's also about taking children and young people seriously as experts on their own well-being. We know from research that there are many areas of wellbeing that cannot be assessed from the outside. In psychological research studies, we often have very moderate to poor agreement when we ask adults and parents how children are doing and then ask the children themselves. Especially when it comes to feelings such as sadness, self-perception or self-confidence. And that means that you may make many important, but then wrong decisions.

My greatest wish would be that we consider the responsibility of this powerful institution of school to be not merely learning processes – in the sense of academic outcomes – but also to be well-being. In other words, we should think about educational success and well-being together and understand that both are interdependent. And that in this institution, creating well-being must be of equal importance to achieving good grades in math and German..

All we have to do is start collecting data, measuring it, and aligning our school processes with it. This is a longer transformation process. But I don't think we can avoid it. Look at the shortage of skilled workers. We can't afford to have 20 or 30 percent of adults in the future suffering from mental illness and losing their jobs as skilled workers. We have to do something. Because all studies show that if we don't take care of mental health, the costs to society as a whole will increase in all areas.