BRADFORD Council's Health & Social Care and Children’s Services Overview and Scrutiny committees are meeting on Tuesday to discuss the mental wellbeing of children and young people.

The special joint committee meeting is being held during Children's Mental Health Week, which raises awareness of the need to look after young people's mental wellbeing.

The committee will hear from young people and services on the progress the Council has made and its key achievements.

These including expanding its delivery of Wellness Recovery Action Planning (WRAP) groups delivered by Barnardo’s, Sharing Voices, Roshni Ghar, Girlington Community Association, Bradford District Care Foundation NHS Trust and Youth in Mind.

In the past year, 31 courses reaching 503 young people have been delivered and the Council has also trained a further 26 professionals to deliver courses.

The meeting comes as a study by home education provider Oxford Home Schooling looking at the pressure pupils are put under shows that a third of primary school parents say exams are making their children stressed.

The new research reveals that even primary school children are being strained by the prospect of their academic performance.

The study reveals that, alongside a third (33%) of parents saying their child feels stressed by exams, two in five parents (40%) of pupils aged between five and 11 feel there is too much pressure on their children to perform well in them.

Homework is also a cause for concern, with a quarter (25%) of parents of all ages of school children believing that too much homework is set for them.

Dr Nick Smith, Principal at Oxford Home Schooling, said: “It will be a shock to some to find out that almost as many primary school children are stressed by exams as secondary school pupils. Although school is a place for learning, in primary education it’s just as important to allow children to feel comfortable, so that they can learn more efficiently and effectively.

“At five years old, children in the UK start school a year earlier than in most other European countries - two years earlier for those in Northern Ireland. They’ll spend around 10,500 hours of their lives in school before they’re 16 years old.

“The classroom itself can be a stressful setting for many, and that can stick with children for a long time. So it’s very important for parents and teachers to recognise when a child is stressed and find alternative ways of helping them cope. Home schooling can be one of the most effective ways of doing this.”