Response to our petition

Today we received the official response from the Department for Education to our petition calling for suicide prevention to be made a compulsory part of the school curriculum (signatures currently at close to 128,000). Quite frankly the response isn’t good enough.

You can see the full response by clicking the petition button below.

The DfE state that “we need to do everything we can to prevent” suicide – they’re not.

The use of “can” and “should” clearly show that suicide is NOT a compulsory part of the school curriculum.

Schools that choose to address suicide prevention can only teach “older pupils” – how does this help the younger children who are suffering suicidal thoughts? On our recent walk we met two sets of suicide-bereaved parents of 11-year-olds – how do you think that they will feel about this?

They tell us that there will be a review of the RSHE curriculum in 2023 and an updated curriculum published in 2024. Around 200 school-aged children take their own lives each year – that’s another 400 young people we will have allowed to die before making a change that could have saved them.

We, as a society, are not doing enough to help our young people and the government are falling a long way short of doing everything they can to equip them with the knowledge and understanding that will help them deal with the biggest risk in their lives – themselves.

How can they justify NOT making suicide prevention a compulsory part of the school curriculum?

Please help us keep the pressure on by signing the petition: