‘Wild West’ of PSHE needs reform, MPs told

Commons Education Committee Robert Halfon said social media sites are like ‘crack for kids’.

Personal, social, health and economic education is a ‘Wild West’ promoting ‘contested ideologies’ and in need of reform, MPs have been told (Peter Byrne/PA) (PA Archive)

Personal, social, health and economic education (PSHE) is a “Wild West” promoting “contested ideologies” and in need of reform, MPs have been told.

Commons Education Select Committee member Miriam Cates asked a hearing on children’s mental health what can be done to reform the subject.

It seems to me at the moment that PSHE is a Wild West, and it's being used in various ways in various schools to teach contested political ideologies in many cases

Conservative MP Miriam Cates

“It seems to me at the moment that PSHE is a Wild West, and it’s being used in various ways in various schools to teach contested political ideologies in many cases,” the Conservative MP said.

She added that these are being taught instead of “what we would have traditionally called the ‘virtues’ – resilience, perseverance, humility, tolerance, the kind of things that actually do give children the foundation for good lifelong mental health”.

Labour’s Lord Layard said: “If you start with the long term, I mean it’s incredible that this is not a specialist subject in secondary schools… If you’ve got to be a specialist historian to teach history, you’ve got to be a specialist life skills person to teach life skills.”

He said that, for primary school teachers, PSHE and mental health training should be a “sizeable chunk” of their training.

“You’ve got to lift this (teaching PSHE) from being one of the least prestigious jobs in the Department for Education to being the most prestigious job in the (Department) because it’s the forefront of progress,” he added.

Committee chairman Robert Halfon told the hearing that social networking site TikTok is almost like “crack for kids” and that social media is damaging to pupils’ mental health.

“When I visit schools and speak to pupils, every time I ask them what is causing your anxiety or problems, they say ‘social media, social media, social media’,” he said.

“I think the social media companies bear a lot of responsibility for this – TikTok is almost like crack for kids, it’s sexualised content, they have these images all the time which the kids are trying to adopt,” he added, noting that there are similar problems with other social media companies.

if you are a victim of bullying at school, back in the day at least when you got home you can feel that that was a bit of escape. With social media and all these different devices, it must feel for some young people that they can never escape

Conservative MP Tom Hunt

Conservative MP Tom Hunt said the prevalence of social media could make issues like bullying inescapable.

“I can imagine, if you are a victim of bullying at school, back in the day at least when you got home you can feel that that was a bit of escape,” he said.

“With social media and all these different devices, it must feel for some young people that they can never escape.”

Moussin Ismail, principal of Newham Collegiate Sixth Form in east London, said pupils with serious mental health problems need support but added that children must be given tools to manage the “slings and arrows of daily life” and that there is a risk of “pathologising” these.