The body, which promotes the teaching of personal, social, health and economic (PSHE), commented on the Chief Medical Officer’s annual report ‘Our Children Deserve Better: Prevention Pays’ and in particular its focus on the health and wellbeing of children and young people.
The report said:
“It is vitally important that all children and young people have access to good quality PSHE in schools that supports their developmental goals and enables them to successfully negotiate health risk behaviours and develop positive personal attributes.
"PSHE at school is an important part of the way in which schools can contribute to improving resilience and health among children.”
The report goes on to talk about the educational benefits of supporting the health and wellbeing of children and young people and describes PSHE education as: "a subject that forms a bridge between health and education by building resilience and wellbeing".
The CMO's report - which has the backing of several children’s charities - calls on Government, the whole health service, social care and education professionals to take action and make improvements now.
It highlights a strong economic case for doing more, sooner. For example, reducing obesity by just one percentage point among children and young people could lead to savings of £1bn each year as children would be less likely to end up with long-term health problems needing NHS treatment.
In addition to improvements on physical health, the report highlights the need for society to support children to build emotional resilience, supporting children through better communication to learn from their mistakes and deal with life’s inevitable ‘ups and downs’.
PSHE Association Chief Executive Joe Hayman said:
“We warmly welcome the CMO’s annual report, which highlights what an important subject PSHE education is. As the report notes, pupils value PSHE education, but want it to be improved, with more emphasis on resilience and emotional health, as well as sexual health and staying safe online.
"The report also indicates a need for more training for teachers, more use of specialists, more time on the curriculum and more emphasis on the subject in amongst all of the other priorities schools seek to address. These are goals we completely endorse and share.
“We therefore welcome the CMO’s recommendation that Public Health England, the PSHE Association and other leading organisations in the field should review the evidence linking health and wellbeing with educational attainment and from that promote models of good practice for educational establishments to use. We look forward to conversations with Public Health England and other partners about putting this recommendation into practice.
“In the meantime, we will be studying the report in detail and providing a comprehensive overview for our members shortly."
The report paints a stark picture of the experience children have growing up in our society, as well as the dramatic difference between the experiences of poor children and better-off children.
Other countries do much better than the UK when it comes to children’s health. Over a quarter (nearly 27%) of our children are either in or at serious risk of being in poverty, compared to just 16% in the Netherlands.
Currently, 12.5% of toddlers are obese. 17% of boys and 16% of girls up to the age of fifteen are obese too. The long-term societal cost of childhood obesity is estimated to be as high as £700 million each year.
75% of lifetime mental health disorders start before 18 years of age, with the peak onset of most conditions being from 8 to 15 years.
Approximately 10% of adolescents suffer from a mental health problem at any one time. The report also highlights a number of good examples of things that are already going on, like the government commitment to increasing the number of health visitors and the number of families that will be helped by family nurse practitioners. But it calls for wider and faster action.
Professor Dame Sally C Davies, Chief Medical Officer, said:
"My generation unquestioningly expected our future to be better than our parents’ and grandparents’. But our children and grandchildren face a far more challenging outlook. We need a renewed focus on children.
"This report questions whether we have got the balance right in our society and should act as a wake-up call. The evidence is crystal clear and the opportunity is huge – investing in children is a certain way of improving the economic health of our nation, as well as our children’s well-being."