In my role as director of the Mindfulness Initiative, a policy institute that provides the research and administrative support to the UK All-Party Parliamentary Group on Mindfulness, I’m helping MPs engage with the Department for Education on mindfulness and offering a number of suggestions for their consideration. These suggestions could be helpful for anyone thinking of bringing mindfulness training into schools.

Mindfulness in Schools: Potential Problems and How to Fix Them

  1. Know the difference between focussed awareness and mindful awareness Firstly, we emphasize that mindfulness is more than just calm and concentration. If mindfulness training is to be distinguishable from relaxation or attention training, children need to learn about the mind and develop certain qualities of awareness—like openness, curiosity and care. After stilling the mind using a narrow focus, the aim is to then develop an allowing receptivity to all experience, and particularly to thoughts and emotions. These qualities are thought to underpin many of the protective and therapeutic effects of mindfulness training. We recommend that a curriculum should either integrate appropriate learning content that develops mindful attitudes or that it not be called mindfulness practice. Otherwise, commissioners leave themselves open to the accusation of deploying ‘McMindfulness’, and if superficial programs are perceived by teachers as having limited benefits, this may hinder later attempts to implement deeper training that has more profound implications. As an example, although the MindUp curriculum introduces elementary school children to the concept of mindfulness, the exercises they introduce are not described as mindfulness meditation. Instead they are skillfully called brain breaks for the purpose of developing focussed awareness, which is valuable in itself and is the foundation from which mindfulness can then later be developed.
  2. Put on your own oxygen mask first If teachers are to guide practices for children, it’s very important that they embody mindfulness themselves and have high levels of personal motivation. It is widely held that mindfulness training cannot be delivered from a script, much like you wouldn’t ask a teacher who can’t swim to teach a swimming class from a textbook. If a program cannot involve extensive teacher-training (often six months of committed personal practice and then a 4 or 5 day training) we recommend that it relies heavily on high-quality audio and video content, which teacher and pupils could follow together, perhaps leading to facilitated class discussion. It is possible to thread learning points progressively through a program of guided mindfulness practices, as is the case in popular consumer apps that use short animations to communicate core principles but then don’t separate teaching content from practice guidance. One alternative is to parachute in an external mindfulness teacher, but be aware in doing so that teaching kids is different to teaching adults—and this person must be properly trained to work with young conscripts! The downside of bringing in external teachers, in addition to cost, is that mindful attitudes are not then integrated into staff culture. If mindfulness is not modeled for children, it’s less likely to be seen as important and adopted.
  3. Avoid ‘top-down’ implementation Although the Mindfulness Initiative has been speaking to government ministers for a number of years now about how they can catalyze all the interest in mindfulness bubbling up at a school level, we’d suggest that it’s probably never a good idea to mandate training in a curriculum. At least, not unless mindfulness becomes as ‘mainstream’ as physical exercise and schools have the resources to hire dedicated staff. Because critically, if a school were compelled to teach mindfulness without staff who have a level of knowledge and interest, the likely outcomes are resistance, misunderstanding and dilution. Mindfulness requires personal intention and you cannot command someone to be mindful. If teachers are being asked to deliver content themselves, robust practice and voluntary dedication must exist first. Across sectors, the spread of quality training won’t be top-down—the how and where of mindfulness teaching is largely in the hands of grassroots advocates. It therefore requires patience to establish a program with integrity. How to avoid top-down mindfulness implementation: Training staff has many benefits in its own right, and research is currently taking place into the impact of teachers’ own mindfulness practice on general teaching quality. If you need help justifying staff training to stakeholders, our recent publication Building the Case for Mindfulness in Workplace offers detailed advice.
  4. Get buy-in at every level In addition to cultivating interest at a grassroots level, it’s also key to identify both a senior sponsor, ideally the principal or head teacher, and a lead champion to oversee program development. A program driven by a lone champion without senior support is likely to collapse once that evangelist leaves the organization. Too much push from one person without buy-in from other stakeholders, like parents or governors, can also create resistance from colleagues. Similarly, the enthusiasm of a senior figure without the time and resource to work on the detail or inspire others can lead to half-hearted implementation, and then to erosion when their attention is drawn elsewhere. The $8 million Wellcome Trust-funded research program into mindfulness in schools, led by teams in Oxford, Cambridge and University College London, has examined existing implementation of mindfulness in schools as an early phase of the work. In common with innovative schools programs more generally, anecdotal evidence suggests that mindfulness training tends to operate in stops and starts, with only those schools that are already running effectively being able to find the resources to properly embed mindfulness into school life. How to get your school community to help a mindfulness program thrive This new initiative from the Department for Education in the UK is a welcome response to the rising tide of mental ill health and poor wellbeing amongst children in our schools. But in giving young people the skills to train their own minds; in helping them to be more aware of their experience the better to learn and grow in each moment; in providing the space for natural discernment to arise and lead to actions that are more in line with values… perhaps a yet greater prize waits to be recognized.   The large research trial being run at the University of Oxford as part of the Wellcome project is still recruiting UK schools to take part. If you work in a mainstream secondary school and would like to find out more about the opportunity, visit www.myriadproject.org