Ms Maureen Murray:

I agree totally with the Deputy that the system puts barriers in the way of young people progressing from primary and into secondary and further on. The first barrier they come across is the issue of leaving their safe and secure primary school and moving into a totally complex second level system. My background is in education and I have seen a lot of this first hand. That is one area we need to look at. The Deputy mentioned the exam system. There is no doubt the exam system has been shown to add immense stress to young people and it totally stressed them out throughout Covid. One of the good things we saw during Covid was the voice of young people coming out to say they were finding it stressful and difficult. Schools find things very difficult insofar as they are very isolated and alone in dealing with these problems and issues, that is, trauma of young people coming into the school and family difficulties and violence coming into the school.

Schools are very much on their own and isolated which is why they are afraid to do anything. I mentioned our One Good School initiative to the Deputy. We hope it will be rolled out in every school in the country because it brings the school together as a unit to respond to the needs of young people in the first instance. Our programme helps to support the young people, parents, teachers and school leadership. We heard earlier reference to how difficult school leaders are finding things at present and, yes, it is exceptionally difficult for school leaders at present. The One Good School programme starts with school leaders to support and train them and then invites school staff to be trained and included.

When I talk about training, I am talking about moving away from the absolute fear there has been in schools over the years to even mention mental health. Every school was afraid of opening a can of worms and whether they would open up something it could not deal with. We need to look at mental health and, in the first instance, destigmatise it. Every single one of us sitting around the table this morning has mental health. Sometimes it is good and other times it is not so good. One of the first things we need to do with the system is to destigmatise the concept of mental health being bad. We all have mental health and we have to deal with it.

When schools are complex organisations, it is very important for parents to be included and on board. Our programme ensures that parents are included in all decisions about the school. I am quite passionate about the voice of young people being in everything that we do. Young people have to be at the centre of all our planning and consultations moving forward.