 The impact of area level mental health interventions on outcomes for secondary school pupils: Evidence from the HeadStart programme in EnglandSarah Cattan, Suzet Tanya Lereya, Yeosun Yoon, Ruth Gilbert and Jessica Deighton Economics of Education Review, 2023, vol. 96, issue C Abstract: In light of the dramatic rise in mental health disorders amongst adolescents seen in the past decade across the world, there is an urgent need for robust evidence on what works to combat this trend. This paper provides the first robust evaluation of the impacts on school outcomes of 6-year funding programme (HeadStart) for area-level mental health interventions for adolescents. Exploiting educational administrative data on ten cohorts of state-educated secondary school students, we use the synthetic control method to construct counterfactual outcomes for areas that received the funding. We show that the funding did not affect students’ absenteeism or academic attainment, but it prevented around 800 students (c. 10% of students typically excluded yearly) from being excluded in its first year. The transient nature of this effect suggests that sustained funding for intervention may be a necessary but not sufficient condition to maintain programme effectiveness over time. Keywords: Exclusion; Absenteeism; Mental health; Intervention; Adolescents; Synthetic control methods (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:ecoedu:v:96:y:2023:i:c:s0272775723000729 DOI: 10.1016/j.econedurev.2023.102425 Access Statistics for this article Economics of Education Review is currently edited by E. Cohn More articles in Economics of Education Review from Elsevier |
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