This paper explores schools’ new role in promoting children’s mental health, as a key focus for policy makers across the global north. An education policy analysis is conducted for England and Australia, two nations advocating a ‘bottom‐up’ approach to mental health promotion, granting flexibility to schools and municipal authorities. Here it is argued that a common policy lexicon is evident where key concepts—wellbeing, resilience, character—are constructed on taken‐for‐granted assumptions. These are argued to be limited by an emphasis upon the individual constituents of mental health, which is contrasted against a broader conception of wellbeing, evident in recent non‐governmental international policy. Empirical data is then presented from two separate studies in England and Australia, where young peoples’ perspectives are used to arbitrate the efficacy of the policy construction of wellbeing, in canvassing a relational and social identity approach as a viable alternative. Both studies privilege the voices of young people on wellbeing and identity, with findings from England highlighting that the dominant schooling narrative of resilience perceived by students, misses the ontological and social dimensions of their wellbeing. Research with Indigenous young people in Australia is then evaluated for the affordances generated by identity building and affirming programmes in schools. Notwithstanding cultural differences, common aspects were evident across both datasets, revealing the centrality to young people of self‐authenticity, relatedness, and connectedness to nature, as key to their wellbeing. The paper concludes in advancing a set of principles to underpin a relational and social identity approach to schools’ wellbeing promotion strategy.

Educationalists have been concerned with the labelling and treatment of children with mental health difficulties in the education system in England for some time. These concerns have centred on the role of policy in ‘othering’ such students as deviant learners. The unprecedented number of children suffering from mental illnesses, has forced policymakers to address children’s mental health difficulties. This has involved the identification of a sub-set of the school population experiencing ‘less-severe’ mental health issues, to be addressed through a suite of policy interventions delivered by whole-school approaches, but targeted towards children situated as mentally ‘weak’. Drawing upon a Foucauldian theory of governmentality that addresses children’s behavioural motivations, an in-depth analysis of a number of educational policy initiatives related to mental health is conducted, that it is argued are fundamentally flawed. This analysis is followed by a discussion of the performative culture of High Stakes Testing in contributing to children’s mental health difficulties. Here it is argued that a narrative of mental weakness serves to justify a neoliberal rationality towards the treatment of children for whom the performative logic assumed to motivate all learners, fails.

Young people are increasingly lamented as unable to cope with ‘everyday realities of life’ with educational institutions and parenting styles accelerating what some refer to as the ‘snowflake generation’. This paper addresses confusion that exists in the framing of social and emotional wellbeing, delineating three competing perspectives: (1) ‘skills and competencies’, (2) ‘morals and ethics’ and (3) ‘capital and identity’. Embedded within each perspective are distinct notions of the ‘self’ and processes of socialisation and identity formation. The competency-based perspective shifts attention towards the individual and is reliant upon universal skills. This contrasts with a morals and ethics-based perspective on social and emotional wellbeing which is seen to be contingent upon the values that guide our moral and ethical frameworks, and informs how we relate with others. A capital and identity perspective does not speak of ‘wellbeing’ per se, but rather places emphasis on the different sets of resources available to children. These perspectives offer fundamentally distinct framings of the ‘crisis of youth’ and we draw out the implications for current and future policy development they imply.

Early School Leaving (ESL), also known as Early Leaving from Education and Training (ELET), or more generally as Early Leaving (EL), has become a key focus within Europe in recent years. According ...

This paper contributes to the recent turn within Children’s Geographies concerned with understanding and illuminating educational inequalities. The focus is upon pupils assigned to lower ‘ability’ groupings, in a school under pressure to raise attainment. The objective of the paper is twofold, firstly to consider how school grouping practices affect children’s sense of belonging in lessons, and secondly, to contextualise these findings against children’s spatial orientations within the broader school environment. It is argued that a spatial focus may shed light upon the educational policy drivers that contribute to the exclusion of disadvantaged children. Neo-liberal imperatives of accountability and performance can be seen to shape hierarchies of belonging, where pupils’ positioning in ‘ability’ groupings enables/limits the spatial agency that they can exert. Macro policy concerns are mapped onto micro school processes concerning the construction and governance of school spaces, using theoretical insights from Michel Foucault and R.D Sack.