While attention has been rightly focused on rising need among pupils: anxiety, school avoidance, emotional dysregulation, behavioural difficulties, there has not been enough of a spotlight on the growing pressure on schools to hold more and more. And beneath that conversation sits another reality, less often addressed with the seriousness it deserves: the adults responsible for children are themselves under immense strain.

Today’s teachers are expected to teach, guide, manage behaviour, notice what is wrong, respond to distress, absorb pressure, adapt constantly, and keep going. The role has expanded far beyond teaching lessons, yet the support around them has not kept pace. Teach First found that 84% of teachers said they were spending more time helping pupils with mental health issues, while 58% said they were spending more time on social care issues and 52% more time on family or financial hardship. That matters not because this piece is about pupils, but because it shows how much the job itself has changed.

“Teachers are carrying too much. If we want children to do well, we have to care for the adults around them too.”

This isn’t only a workload issue, although workload remains a major part of the picture. It’s also an issue of cumulative emotional pressure. Teachers are increasingly working in classrooms shaped by anxiety, behavioural complexity, unmet needs, and wider pressures on families and public services. Essentially, problems that once sat outside the classroom now shape the classroom every day. And that has consequences.

Across the profession, the warning signs are becoming harder to ignore: stress, exhaustion, poor morale, rising attrition, and a growing sense that the job has become too much for too many people. The DofE’s 2025 Working Lives of Teachers and Leaders survey found that among teachers and leaders considering leaving the state sector, 89% cited stress or poor wellbeing and 89% cited high workload. At the same time, NFER has warned that teacher recruitment and retention in England remain in a “perilous state”, with vacancies now at record levels.

Teachers talk not only about being overworked, but about being drained. Not only about pressure, but about operating for too long without enough room to recover. That sense of unsustainability shows up in smaller, everyday markers too. Teacher Tapp shared that 70% of teachers currently working full-time would prefer to work part-time, a striking sign that many don’t reject teaching itself… it’s just the current shape of the job. The same report found that 60% of teachers were not getting their much needed PPA time.

The pressure isn’t only about hours. It’s also about the intensity of the working day. Education Support’s 2024 Teacher Wellbeing Index found that 57% of staff felt pupils had become more disruptive in lessons. More importantly for this conversation, 82% of those who said challenging behaviour had increased reported that this had negatively affected their mental health and wellbeing. Behaviour, in other words, is not only a classroom issue. It is a staff-wellbeing issue.

Teachers deserve better. We need to take the matter seriously… adult wellbeing shapes the environment children grow up and learn in. Children don’t form their sense of self in a vacuum. They develop through relationships, through repetition, through what they see, absorb and experience from the adults around them. They are influenced not only by what adults say, but by how adults cope, relate, respond, and look after themselves. If the adults in children’s lives are depleted, stretched thin, and struggling to function well, that affects the atmosphere around children in ways that are real, even when nobody says it out loud.

That is why teacher wellbeing is not separate from child wellbeing. It sits beneath it.

If we want children to feel secure, emotionally healthy, and grounded in who they are, then we have to think much more seriously about the people helping to raise and educate them. We have to support not just children, and not just parents, but everyone with responsibility for children. Because children are always learning from the adults around them, not only from what they are taught, but from what is modelled.

That belief sits at the heart of why The Happy Confident Company is launching a free teacher wellbeing platform.

We already work to support children and parents. But it’s become increasingly clear that any serious commitment to children’s wellbeing has to include a commitment to the wellbeing of the adults around them too. Teachers are carrying too much to be left out of that picture. They need practical, meaningful support that helps protect their own wellbeing, strengthen their own capacity, and make it more possible to show up in healthy ways for themselves, for their colleagues, and for the children in their care.

The platform is built around the areas that matter most to everyday wellbeing: stress, anxiety and overwhelm; nutrition; movement; self-development; relationships and friendships; and mindfulness. These are not extras. They are part of what helps people function well over time.

Stress, anxiety and overwhelm speak directly to the lived experience of many teachers working in a profession that often demands constant output with too little pause. Nutrition and movement matter because wellbeing is not only emotional; it is physical too, and it becomes much harder to think clearly, manage pressure, and stay well when basic needs are neglected. Self-development matters because teachers are people as well as professionals, and they need room to reflect, grow, and reconnect with themselves outside the demands of the role. Relationships and friendships matter because connection protects people; very few sustain intense work well in isolation. And mindfulness matters because in fast, overloaded environments, the ability to pause, reset, and regain perspective can be an important part of staying mentally well.

The aim is not to suggest that teachers can solve structural problems through better self-care. Nor is it to push responsibility for systemic strain back onto individuals. The point is simpler and more honest than that: to offer support that helps teachers look after their mental, emotional and physical wellbeing while working in conditions that are often hard to sustain.

At its core, this is about valuing teachers not only as professionals delivering outcomes, but as people whose wellbeing matters in its own right.

It’s also about recognising something fundamental: children benefit when the adults around them are better supported, more emotionally resourced, and better able to function well. If we want children to develop a strong sense of self and belonging, then we need to invest in the people helping to shape that. We need adults around children who feel healthier, more supported, and more able to model confidence, self-respect, care, and emotional balance.

The wider vision behind this platform is that we don’t just help teachers cope but help them feel better supported. We’re not just acknowledging the load but we’re responding to it. We aren’t just talking about child wellbeing but strengthening the wider human environment around the child. Because protecting teacher wellbeing is not a side issue. It is part of how healthier childhoods are built.

It’s open to everyone, because mental health and emotional wellbeing should be a universal right, not a privilege so please do sign up today at https://schools.happyconfident.com/sign-in