• GOVERNMENT cuts to budgets are forcing schools to cut posts for vulnerable children. Last year three primary schools, St Michael’s in Camden Town, St Mary’s in Kilburn and Argyle in King’s Cross, cut specialist Learning Mentor posts. They support children with behavioural or emotional problems or at risk of disengaging from education.

Learning Mentor posts were originally established in schools in the most deprived areas of the borough. These skilled and specialist staff are able to take individual children who suffered emotional trauma for one-to-one sessions to support their reintegrating into class.

They often supported children subjected to domestic violence, parental or sibling bereavement, or those at risk of exclusion among many things. Their effectiveness helped many children stay in school rather than face exclusion or education in Pupil Referral Units.

Their skills help target children showing signs of disengaging from schools at early stages and they often support children’s families. Their support has improved the wellbeing of children as the only staff in school with both the skills and the specific allocated time to take on this work. Many are either local to the schools community or have worked in that community for years.

Now schools becoming desperate to balance their books are seeing these posts as expendable. Figures from the Charlie Waller Foundation show that suicide is the biggest killer of boys from five to 16 and the second biggest for girls in the same age range.

Learning Mentors, working with these children, help build their resilience and reduce their levels of stress and anxiety in an attempt to make their school life a safe haven.

Edith Neville School in Somers Town and St Dominic near Queen’s Crescent in Kentish Town are in areas that have seen stabbings and gang-influenced violence earlier this year. Other schools such as Kingsgate in Kilburn and Beckford in West Hampstead have children with high levels of need. These schools are cutting their Learning Mentor posts this year.

All schools will have statutory responsibilities to identify and support children with mental health needs. Without Learning Mentors, these and other schools around the borough will only have already hard-pressed teachers to fall back on to provide that support.

Unison is urging governing bodies not to take the easy route and cut Learning Mentor posts. We know schools stand or fall by their academic results. For every child to really matter, schools know that targeted support for those children whose lives have been disrupted or live in chaotic circumstances is essential not just to their academic success but in some cases may affect their lives.

Schools act in loco parentis and looking after children’s wellbeing has to be as high a priority as safeguarding their education. Learning Mentors are key to this support.

We think the council could step in to keep these posts with ring-fenced funding as part of its early prevention work to tackle youth violence.

HUGO PIERRE
Camden Unison Schools Convener