Pressure mounts for college staff as student mental health declines, warns AoC

As student mental health continues to decline and CAMHS waiting lists increase, pressures on front-line college staff are mounting, the Association of Colleges has warned today.

Two reports* on student and staff mental health, published by AoC during Mental Health Awareness Week, show a perfect storm: student mental health needs remain persistently high and are becoming increasingly complex, and without proper funding and system alignment, college staff are struggling with the emotional and intensive workload. The reports urge the government to act now to formally recognise FE as core partners in mental health policy and provide ring-fenced and sustained funding to ease these pressures.

The Student Mental Health Report 2026 found that the majority (82%) of colleges reported slight or significant increase in mental health disclosures of students aged between 16 and 18-years-old during the past 12 months, with nearly half (46%) describing this increase as significant. Around 60% of colleges reported an increase in the proportion of 16 to 18‑year‑olds demonstrating suicidal ideation over the past 12 months, with one quarter describing this as a significant increase.  

Despite the ever-growing need for sustained, joined up and high-quality mental health support for students, further education colleges do not receive specific funding for mental health services, and have to find funds from already-stretched budgets.  

The majority of colleges recognise mental health as a strategic priority, despite the funding pressures, and more than three-quarters (78%) have a mental health strategy in place, two-thirds (68%) hire counsellors, and two-thirds (61%) report increasing resources for student mental health and wellbeing. External partners too, are utilised, but while colleges work hard to build and sustain relationships with a wide range of organisations, the survey found that external support continues to rely heavily on goodwill, local innovation and individual relationships rather than consistent system design.

This means that the pressures on the existing college workforce are increasing at pace. In the corresponding Staff Mental Health Report 2026, nearly four in five colleges (79%) said that student mental health needs and supporting emotional regulation has a negative impact on staff mental health and wellbeing. Almost half (47%) of colleges report that staff sometimes or regularly undertake mental health related tasks outside of contracted hours.

Jen Hope, Area Director (East Midlands) and Senior Policy Lead (Mental Health), AoC, said: “Colleges are on the front line of mental health prevention, early intervention and ongoing support, identifying and responding to highly complex and persistent mental health needs. As waiting lists for external mental health services grow, colleges are having to fill the gaps and are working tirelessly to ensure that students get the support they so desperately need.

“Colleges are deeply committed to supporting both their students and staff, but college staff are clear that they are increasingly operating at the limits of what can be sustained without stronger system alignment and investment. Our data found that as wellbeing and safeguarding teams take on high caseloads with emotional intensity and risk, their own wellbeing is impacted, as is overall workforce sustainability.  

“There is a real and cumulative cost to supporting students at the scale and intensity currently required. Without dedicated funding for mental health in further education, and without intentional, system-level support structures for staff, that cost is being borne disproportionately by the workforce. Staff mental health is not a parallel or competing concern to student wellbeing; it is foundational to it.

“We urgently need the government to recognise colleges as essential partners in national mental health strategy and local system policy delivery, with sustained investment and resourcing for student mental health and staff wellbeing.”

Full recommendations

Government and national policy must:

• explicitly recognise further education within cross-government mental health policy, including strategies for children and young people, aligned to realistic expectations of FE workforce capacity, workload and accountability.
• introduce sustained, ring-fenced funding for student mental health support in further education, proportionate to the scale and complexity of need across prevention, intervention and postvention, and for staff wellbeing, workforce development and workload reduction.
• address structural gaps at transition points between children’s and adult mental health services, to ensure learners do not lose access to support at age 18.

Local health and care systems should:

• formally recognise further education colleges as core partners in mental health prevention, early intervention and safeguarding, demonstrably reflected in local mental health planning, commissioning and data sharing arrangements.
• develop co‑commissioned or embedded specialist models such as shared CAMHS provision or college based mental health practitioners and ensure mental health support teams and early help services are designed for, or meaningfully adapted to, post‑16 contexts.
• ensure FE staff have timely access to occupational mental health support alongside meaningful training and development opportunities across all roles, recognising workforce wellbeing as a system priority.

AoC and sector partners should:

• provide FE specific frameworks, toolkits and model policies that translate national mental health ambition into safe, consistent and operational day to day practice within colleges.
• develop sector wide benchmarking and comparative intelligence to support robust evaluation, board-level assurance and evidence-based strategic planning for both student and staff mental health, underpinned by shared learning and peer networks.
• support proactive exploration of emerging risks including digital wellbeing, social media-related harms and AI use, enabling the FE sector to anticipate and respond to challenges before they escalate.

The Student Mental Health Report can be read in full here. The Staff Mental Health Report can be read in full here. 

*The AoC Student Mental Health Report 2026 had 96 respondents. The AoC Staff Mental Health Report 2026 had 118.