Wellbeing in Schools – From Breakfast to Emotional Support

In 2025, the Government put wellbeing centre stage in education… recognising that learning outcomes and emotional health are linked. At Schools Mutual Services, we have broken down this year’s New School Bill reforms into bit size insights.

The reform recognises that pupils cannot thrive academically unless they feel safe, supported, and emotionally regulated. This also applies to staff, who require systems to help them support pupils to the best of their ability and without overwhelming their own capacity.

Schools have been asked to be proactive and take responsibility for the wellbeing of pupils and staff; this ranges from nutritious morning meals to strategic mental health interventions, with the aim of building resilience, routine, and a genuine culture of care for whole community.

Key Changes of The New School Bill Reform Include:

Designated Mental Health Leads

Each secondary school is now required to appoint a qualified mental health lead to guide school wellbeing strategy. This is a strategic role, responsible for identifying priority areas, creating pastoral policies, and coordinating with external agencies such as school nurses and mental health services. To be effective, schools must allocate dedicated time for these professionals to engage across staff teams, ensure visibility to students and families, and impact over time must be tracked.

Suicide Prevention Education

Suicide prevention education will become a compulsory part of the national curriculum, to be delivered in age-appropriate modules and supported by clinical input. The lessons are to encouraging an open dialogue, reducing stigma around the topic, and arming students with the tools to allow them to recognise emotional distress in themselves and others. This will be a careful balance for schools between sensitivity and clarity, ensuring that students feel empowered and safe when asking for help.

Access to On-Site Mental Health Support

Qualified mental health professionals must be accessible within schools by the end of 2025. This move aims to reduce waiting times, simplify referrals, and provide continuity of care. Whether through embedded counsellors or local service partnerships, schools must ensure provision is consistent, confidential, and inclusive of diverse needs

Universal Breakfast Clubs

All state-funded primary schools are now expected to offer free breakfast clubs to pupils from Reception to Year 6. This creates a structured routine, provides social connection, and offer a calm start to the school morning, which should set the tone for the school day ahead. Other benefits include a reduction in lateness, support pupil behaviour, as well as additional support for vulnerable families. Schools should plan for staffing, a space to hold the breakfast clubs, and wraparound care and support.

Why These Changes Matter:

• They create safe starting points for the school day, reducing anxiety and improving classroom readiness.
• They enable early intervention before emotional issues escalate into behavioural, safeguarding, or attendance concerns.
• They support staff in embedding care practices – not just reacting to crises.

What Schools Should Consider:

To meet the demands of the 2025 wellbeing reforms, schools should ensure their designated mental health lead has protected time to develop meaningful engagement across pupils, staff, and families—empowering them to build a strategy that goes beyond compliance and drives cultural change.

School leadership teams should ensure their safeguarding and wellbeing policies are up to date and reflect the new statutory duties around suicide prevention, mental health access, and whole-school care, ensuring every staff member understands their responsibilities.

Breakfast clubs, are far more than nutritional support, they offer an opportunity to create informal hubs, which will enable pupil check-ins, early SEND intervention, and meaningful family interaction… before the first lesson begins!

By creating systems to nourish body and mind, schools aren’t just meeting policy, they’re helping their communities thrive. And they’re making it easier for families to trust that their children are cared for, every step of the school day.

Schools Mutual Services shares a commitment to fairness, to community, and to doing things right. Choosing SMS as a partner frees up school leaders to focus on compliance to the New Schools Bill, while assisting schools to offer competitive supply teaching rates, and ensuring budgets are protected as much as possible, and used fully to support education… as opposed to profits making their way into shareholder pockets.

If your school hasn’t yet had the conversation with SMS, now’s the time.

You can contact us here ➡️CONTACT FORM

Read the next blog in our New School Bill Reform series here ➡️Relationships, Safety, and Trust – A New Era for RSHE 

With regional offices in Newcastle, Oxford, and Nottingham, SMS works with schools across the whole of the North East, Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire, Leicester, Oxfordshire and Swindon. Each office is embedded within its local education community, working in partnership with school trusts, teaching alliances such as OTSA, and local authorities to deliver tailored supply staffing support across primary and secondary education, whether that is day-to-day supply teaching or long-term placements. From multi academy trusts to community primary and special schools, SMS is helping educational establishments navigate financial pressures with a smarter, more sustainable solution for supply teachers and support staff, that puts pupil outcomes first.

North East Hub

Portland House, Newcastle, NE1 8AL
📞 0191 933 8300
✉️ info@schoolsmutualservices.co.uk

South East Hub

Podium Sandford Gate, Littlemore, Oxford OX4 6LB
📞 01865 597 771
✉️ oxford@schoolsmutualservices.co.uk

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