Private schools accused of not sharing information about suicides
Private schools have been accused of refusing to share information about suicides to local mental health agencies. This comes after The Sunday Telegraph revealed nine school students lost their lives in a north shore high school suicide cluster since January.
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Private and independent schools whose students suicide have been accused of lack of transparency and refusing to exchange information with local mental health services and other agencies.
Two senior government sources said one Sydney school in particular — which has lost two senior students — has been unwilling to engage with state government mental health services both before and after the deaths.
North shore schools have lost nine students to suicide since January, with the majority being in years 11 and 12.
The deaths have been in both public and private schools.
“The school should get out there and stop worrying about their reputation and start worrying about families and the kids,” one senior government source said.
“By them shutting up shop and not providing information to health authorities, it makes it difficult to trace clusters and work out who are the kids they have been in contact with.”
Another senior source said private school administrators were highly concerned about reputational damage and wanted to keep everything “in house”.
“There will be an exodus of kids wanting to go and parents pulling their kids out of the school,” they said.
“That’s a big reason why they don’t want to speak publicly about this.”
The schools have declined to answer detailed questions about their response to the crisis, other than to say they are engaged with youth mental health service headspace and are in “consultation with health authorities, services and networks”.
The Sunday Telegraph can also reveal that in 2017 the Association of Independent Schools warned a NSW Parliamentary inquiry that independent schools were crying out for help on how to deal with mental health issues for Year 11 and Year 12 students.
“The AISNSW notes that, at a time when young people are particularly vulnerable in years 11 and 12, there is no mandated curriculum content in NSW or delivery of consistent mental health information across all school sectors,” AISNSW deputy executive director Michael Carr said in a submission to the Inquiry into the Prevention of Youth Suicide.
“Rather, this is left to the individual school or sector to support students and varies from context to context.
“Schools could benefit from additional guidance and assistance, consistent across all school sectors, to support students during this time.”
NSW Mental Health Minister Bronnie Taylor said the state government-run local health district had offered to provide “whatever services that are required” to all schools.
“I understand that some of those schools have extensive in-house mental health and wellbeing services,” she said.
“The more we can all work together and across services — both government and non-government — the evidence clearly demonstrates that we get better health outcomes,” she said.
“It is about sharing information and making sure that we work together both in the government and non-government sector.
“We owe that to our communities and our young people. And if we are all serious, we understand that we need to work together on this to get the best outcomes.”
Headspace said it was “currently working within school communities in Sydney’s northern corridor”.