\n<\/p>\n
Almost half of primary school teachers are seeing pupils with eating disorders \u201cat least occasionally\u201d, rising to four in five at secondary level, according to a survey by the UK\u2019s largest education union.<\/p>\n
The findings emerged in a poll of 10,000 teachers in English state schools about pupils\u2019 mental health, which also revealed \u201coverwhelming\u201d exam anxiety in secondaries and dwindling numbers of counsellors to support students.<\/p>\n
Asked whether they had observed children showing signs of an eating disorder in the past year, 45% of primary teachers and 78% of secondary teachers said they had seen it at least occasionally.<\/p>\n
Of those, 4% at primary level said they saw evidence of eating disorders \u201cregularly\u201d, compared with 14% of secondary teachers and 20% in special schools and pupil referral units.<\/p>\n
The National Education Union (NEU) poll also revealed that two-thirds (68%) of secondary school teachers who responded are regularly encountering absenteeism linked to students\u2019 mental ill-health.<\/p>\n
Three-quarters (76%) are regularly seeing their students experiencing social difficulties, while the number of teachers complaining that their school does not have a counsellor has risen from 29% to 40% in just three years.<\/p>\n
The rise in mental health problems among children and young people is well documented. A study published in the Lancet last year reported a 65% increase in annual hospital admissions between 2012-3 and 2021-2 for children and young people aged 5-18 with mental health concerns. Increases were \u201cparticularly steep\u201d for eating disorders, rising from 478 to 2,938 over the same period \u2013 an increase of 515%.<\/p>\n
Consultant paediatrician Dr Lee Hudson said eating disorders had become more common but the term covers a wide spectrum of conditions, not just anorexia.<\/p>\n
He said young children can suffer from early anorexia or avoidant\/restrictive food intake disorder (Arfid), characterised by limiting food type or quantity. \u201cEating disorders have become more common. We know it\u2019s going up, but we don\u2019t know why,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Almost half of teachers (48%) who responded to the poll said they regularly witnessed chronic anxiety among pupils, while almost a third (31%) saw students living with social isolation.<\/p>\n
Daniel Kebede, the NEU general secretary, said: \u201cSchools are unable to keep pace with the obvious acceleration in the levels of mental health support needed by young people.<\/p>\n
\u201cDemand clearly outstrips the available resources. In many cases, this rules out early and timely intervention for students.<\/p>\n
\u201cTeachers are crying out for nurses, mental health leads, and quicker access to child and adolescent mental health service <\/strong>support in schools. The majority tell us they have none of these. The rest tell us they do, but it isn\u2019t enough.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Almost half of primary school teachers are seeing pupils with eating disorders \u201cat least occasionally\u201d, rising to four in five at secondary level, according to a survey by the UK\u2019s largest education union. The findings emerged in a poll of 10,000 teachers in English state schools about pupils\u2019 mental health, which also revealed \u201coverwhelming\u201d exam<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":47694,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[3257,2753,496,311,189,6711,583,568,436],"class_list":{"0":"post-47693","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-education","8":"tag-disorders","9":"tag-eating","10":"tag-education","11":"tag-england","12":"tag-finds","13":"tag-primary","14":"tag-pupils","15":"tag-survey","16":"tag-teachers"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47693","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=47693"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47693\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/47694"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=47693"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=47693"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=47693"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}