4. What action is the Welsh Government taking to support student mental health in Wales? OQ56601

Today, I published the 'Renew and reform' plan, a framework for this Government's response to the impacts of the pandemic on learning. The plan focuses on supporting the foundations of learning, including learner well-being, and supporting learners to make progress by focusing on their capacity for resilience.

I met with the National Union of Students Wales last week, and they've been running surveys amongst university students that find that 60 per cent of their members say their mental health is worse than before the pandemic and it's exacerbated social pressures, financial pressures and the academic work that they're facing. As a result, students are at a higher risk of developing mental health problems. I saw that the—. Well, last year, we welcomed that—the last term—the last Welsh Government introduced £10 million in mental health services during the pandemic, which had a great effect on university students. I saw your written statement this morning, which you just referred to, in which you said that the Welsh Government was committed to helping—and I quote—

'post-16 learners to progress to the next steps of their journey,' and provided a little bit of outline on how that would be achieved. But can I ask for a little bit more detail, then, on how post-16 mental health will be addressed as part of that strategy?

Certainly. In a further education context, obviously, individual institutions provide their own well-being and mental health support for students in a wide variety of different ways, from counselling, online support, resilience training—there's a wide range of options that individual institutions deliver to their students. They've all developed and are implementing well-being strategies to support those. What we've seen in the projects undertaken in the last financial year is that a range of resources have been developed that can be mainstreamed and made available across the profession, if you like, and they'll be available on Hwb, in fact, this summer, so those resources are available more widely. And we've made a further allocation of £2 million for this financial year that will help maintain some of the partnerships that underpin some of those initiatives, and we're basing some of the interventions that we're making on recommendations from project reports that we had back in March, which gives us an evidence base for what works.

In higher education, as the Member mentions in his question, we invested £10 million most recently, and I met, as well, with the NUS president a few weeks ago to discuss the priority this is—the shared priority, if I can put it like that—for us and the NUS. She was very clear to me on how significant some of the challenges are that students are facing. What that funding enabled universities to do was introduce a range of measures and interventions, and the Higher Education Funding Council for Wales is undertaking an evaluation of those measures at present. There are some interim results that will be coming shortly, and then, in July, a fuller report on how effective some of those have been, and I'll be looking forward to seeing what impact those have had on the ground then.

Minister, I know we already had our congratulatory message at the lifts earlier, so I'll spare you of the horror of saying it in front of you all today. I just want to ask you: research by the NUS Wales reveals that students are at a higher risk of developing mental health problems than the general population. Many people first encounter mental health problems when they are at university or college, with academic pressure and the anxiety of living away from home for the first time, combined with other factors, actually making students susceptible to poor mental health. This situation has been made worse by the pandemic, which has disrupted many students' education. I'd like to know what is your response to the NUS's call for the Welsh Government to introduce a joined-up strategy that connects provision in education with NHS services to ensure students receive the help and support they so desperately need. Thank you.

I thank the Member for that question, and I think she underlines how significant the issue is. I think, in the way that I responded to Hefin David, there are two aspects to this. One is the investment of £10 million, which was specifically around increased support for emotional and mental health difficulties, but there was also a further package of support prior to that, which was about hardship more broadly. I think the point the Member makes in her question is that the source of mental health challenges for many of our students actually lies beyond the immediate, perhaps, and the sense of vulnerability that I heard the NUS president tell me about herself amongst the student body over the last year contributes, I think, to some of those mental health challenges, and I hope that the support we've been able to provide will help universities tackle that.