Course summary

This course is designed to equip students with the skills, strategies, tools and confidence to promote positive mental health and wellbeing and effectively manage the range of issues within educational settings. Whether building on experience in a current educational role, or beginning a career in education, this course provides students with the opportunity to develop the expertise, confidence and professional values needed to support a range of educational communities. Mental health and wellbeing are increasingly recognised as having an impact on Early Years Foundation stage settings, schools, colleges and universities. The coronavirus pandemic and subsequent lockdowns have exacerbated challenges in these areas, and people working in education often find themselves dealing with these issues with little or no education and experience. The course will enable students to promote the positive mental health and wellbeing of learners of any age using a multidisciplinary, whole-systems approach for improvement. Students will also be equipped with strategies for supporting the mental health and wellbeing of staff. A key aim of the programme is that students will learn in cross-professional groups, ensuring a rich variety of perspectives and focus on the interface between education and other professions. Students will consider these relationships and explore challenges and solutions associated with them. Students will have the opportunity to develop their understanding of mental health and wellbeing in education and critically reflect on this with reference to research, their own professional context and good practice from other disciplines and educational phases. This is an academic, rather than a professional qualification. The research element of the course provides opportunity for students to consider an area of particular interest in depth.