The importance of education professionals - supporting children in grief
On the International Day of Education, Professor Anna Lise Gordon highlights the vital role of education professionals and schools who must be equipped through policy, curriculum, and training to ensure no child feels invisible in their grief:
The importance of education professionals - supporting children in grief
A few stark facts ignited a passion in me to make a difference for bereaved children and young people at school.
· 1 in 29 children aged 5-16 experiences the death of a parent
· 90% of teachers receive no training about bereavement
· The impact of bereavement is particularly acute in areas of disadvantage with significant educational and social consequences
These facts underscore the importance of education professionals – senior leaders, teachers, teaching assistants and any other adults in schools – having access to relevant resources and high-quality training to ensure that they are equipped to support bereaved children and young people.
There are three vital areas in which education professionals can engage with issues about death, grief and loss in their settings. For more information:
1. Policy
In spite of the exhortation in the UK Commission on Bereavement Report for every educational setting to have a bereavement policy, this is still far from reality. This means that schools are often reactive when faced with a bereavement in their community, resulting in inevitable challenges and stress. Many national charities provide bereavement policy templates for schools, but the challenge remains for educational professionals to craft a bereavement policy that provides a useful and pro-active framework that is sufficiently bespoke and flexible to allow for unique situations as they occur in their settings.
2. Curriculum
There is considerable momentum at a national level to embed learning about death more explicitly in the school curriculum, particularly through Personal, Social and Health Education (PSHE) lessons. There are many opportunities for meaningful conversations about grief and loss in the curriculum, including through stories and poetry in English, life cycles in science, festivals and traditions in Religious Education (RE). Education professionals review the curriculum in their schools on a regular basis, providing a welcome opportunity to engage with children with lived experience of bereavement, parents, and local organisations and charities, to enlarge understanding of death and bereavement as a normal part of educational provision in their settings.
3. Training
In educational contexts, we need to recognise that bereavement is an ‘all staff’ issue, requiring a well-planned approach to training for education professionals. Training might range from a generic bereavement awareness session for all adults working in the school, to more specific input for pastoral leads in schools on talking about death to children with additional needs or dealing with suicide, for example. As Gail Precious, National Children’s Bureau, commented at a recent event at St Mary’s University: “If we’re able to have these conversations and have them confidently and competently, then not only will the child feel safe, safer at school, safer to be able to engage with their lessons, but you’ll also feel safer.” Beyond the school setting, it is worth highlighting that training for education professionals has potential, over time, to lead to wider societal change, as death is no longer a taboo subject for conversation among family and friends.
At St Mary’s University in Twickenham, London, we train 500+ new primary and secondary teachers every year, and are committed to the important theme of bereavement in education, through our work in research, policy and practice, and wider engagement with charities and organisations. We hope that our commitment to training with early career teachers will have a ripple effect over the coming years, ensuring that increasing numbers of teachers feel more prepared when they inevitably encounter bereavement in their work with children and young people.
There is a plethora of national and local charities, specialising in support for grieving children and young people, that AtaLoss collaborate with and direct to through this website. AtaLoss also have their own Listening People project providing emergency help, training and resources for teachers, youth workers, counsellors and anyone who works with young people to safely and confidently enable them to engage with the difficult topic of loss.
Above all, an unswerving commitment to supporting bereaved children and young people in their educational setting is undoubtedly an investment in longer-term public health and wellbeing. No child should feel invisible in their grief, at any stage or in any context, so let’s continue to collaborate with education professionals in this vital area!
Anna Lise is Professor of Education at St Mary’s University, a National Teaching Fellow and AtaLoss Subject Matter Expert on ‘Education Professionals Supporting Children in Grief’.
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