Government Policies for Mental Health in Schools

India has nearly 15 lakh schools and over 26 million students – making the school system one of the most powerful platforms for addressing mental health at scale. Yet, for decades, the psychological well-being of children inside classrooms remained an afterthought in education policy. That began to shift with a series of legislative and programmatic initiatives aimed at making schools safer, more equitable, and more supportive environments. Two of the most significant among these are the Right to Education (RTE) Act, 2009 and the Rashtriya Madhyamik Shiksha Abhiyan (RMSA). Understanding what these policies say – and where they fall short – is essential to grasping the state of mental health in Indian schools today.

The RTE Act and its role in protecting children’s mental health 🔗

The Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009 came into force on April 1, 2010, and marked a landmark shift in how Indian law treats children in educational settings. While the Act is best known for guaranteeing free and compulsory education to children between the ages of 6 and 14, one of its most psychologically significant provisions is found in Section 17.

Section 17(1) of the RTE Act prohibits both physical punishment and mental harassment, and Section 17(2) makes it a punishable offence. This was the first time Indian legislation formally acknowledged that harm to a child in a school setting is not just physical – it is psychological too.

What counts as corporal punishment under the RTE Act? 🔗

Under the RTE Act, corporal punishment is classified into three categories: physical punishment, mental harassment, and discrimination. Physical punishment refers to any action that causes pain, hurt, injury, or discomfort to a child, however minor. Mental harassment refers to any non-physical treatment that is detrimental to a child’s academic and psychological well-being. This includes belittling a child in class, ridiculing a student with a learning disability, or publicly humiliating a child for poor performance.

The Act also places explicit duties on governments and local authorities. Sections 8 and 9 of the RTE Act require the appropriate government and local authority to ensure that children from weaker sections and disadvantaged groups are not discriminated against and are not prevented from completing elementary education. These provisions together create a legal framework for a child-friendly learning environment – one where a student’s emotional safety is treated as inseparable from their right to education.

Why banning corporal punishment matters for mental health 🔗

The psychological consequences of corporal punishment in schools are well-documented. Research shows that trauma from physical punishment can contribute to long-term mental health problems including anxiety disorders, depression, and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and it erodes the trust children should have in their teachers and educational institutions. A child who fears their teacher cannot learn effectively from them – and the RTE Act, at least in principle, addresses this directly.

A survey by the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR) found that 99.86% of 6,632 surveyed children had encountered some form of harsh punishment, with 75% reporting being hit with a cane. These figures make clear that the Act’s mandate is not a formality – it responds to a real, pervasive problem.

In 2014, the Ministry of Human Resource Development issued a formal advisory to all states under Section 35(1) of the RTE Act, directing them to frame state- and school-level guidelines for preventing corporal punishment and ensuring complaint redressal mechanisms are in place. The guidelines also specify that school boards should make a corporal-punishment-free environment a condition for granting and maintaining school affiliation or recognition.

Gaps in enforcement 🔗

Despite the law’s clear mandate, implementation remains uneven. A study conducted in 60 schools across 6 districts of West Bengal found that corporal punishment still existed in 30% of schools surveyed, even after the ban came into force. The Global Initiative to End All Corporal Punishment of Children notes that the RTE Act’s prohibition applies only to children aged 6 to 14, leaving older secondary school students in a legal grey area. Additionally, in practice, corporal punishment in schools tends not to be prosecuted because it remains widely accepted socially and is regarded as a legitimate form of discipline.

Rashtriya Madhyamik Shiksha Abhiyan (RMSA): building a foundation for equity and quality 🔗

If the RTE Act set the legal floor for child safety in elementary schools, the Rashtriya Madhyamik Shiksha Abhiyan (RMSA) attempted to raise the quality ceiling for secondary education. Launched in March 2009, RMSA is a centrally sponsored scheme of the Ministry of Human Resource Development, designed to enhance the quality of secondary education and increase the gross enrolment rate from 52% to 75% within five years. It aimed to provide universal access to secondary education for all children between 15 and 16 years of age.

What RMSA focused on 🔗

The scheme aimed to improve the quality of education by making all secondary schools conform to prescribed norms, remove gender, socio-economic and disability barriers, and provide universal access to secondary level education by the end of the 12th Five Year Plan. In practical terms, this meant building new schools, upgrading existing ones, and deploying trained teachers in underserved areas.

Teacher training was a central pillar of the programme. Key components included in-service teacher training, capacity development of local institutions to support quality improvements, provision of core infrastructure and learning material for secondary schools, and development of a student assessment system. By 2017, the proportion of teachers with professional qualifications such as a B.Ed. degree increased from 83% in 2010 to 87% in 2017, and the proportion of schools with subject-specific teachers available across the five core subjects increased from 62.2% in 2009 to 87.7% in 2017.

RMSA also paid particular attention to equity. The scheme emphasised removing existing disparities in socio-economic and gender background at the secondary level of education, and included integrated education for disabled children (IEDC) to meet the needs of mentally and physically disadvantaged students. By creating safer, more inclusive, and better-resourced school environments, RMSA indirectly supported the conditions that are essential for good mental health – belonging, academic confidence, and freedom from discrimination.

RMSA’s evolution into Samagra Shiksha 🔗

In 2018, RMSA was merged with Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) and the Centrally Sponsored Scheme on Teacher Education to form Samagra Shiksha, an integrated scheme for school education. This integration signalled an intent to address education as a continuum – from pre-primary through to senior secondary – rather than in isolated programme silos. Samagra Shiksha has since incorporated provisions for student wellness activities and counselling support, though dedicated mental health programming remains sparse.

Challenges in policy implementation 🔗

Despite the legislative and programmatic groundwork laid by the RTE Act and RMSA, mental health support within Indian schools remains deeply inadequate in practice. The gap between policy intent and on-ground reality is substantial – and it has serious consequences for millions of students.

A fragmented policy landscape 🔗

India’s mental health policies predominantly prioritize treatment and rehabilitation. While they acknowledge the significance of youth well-being, the initiatives undertaken are fragmented and lack comprehensive data on reach and utilisation. The RTE Act addresses safety from punishment but does not mandate school counsellors, mental health screenings, or psychological support services. RMSA improved teacher quality and infrastructure but similarly did not embed mental health literacy as a core component of teacher training.

The Mental Healthcare Act, 2017 protects the dignity and rights of persons with mental illness and guarantees them the right to affordable and quality mental health services, but it does not place any specific obligations on educational institutions. This leaves schools legally undefined in their responsibilities toward student mental health.

Shortage of mental health professionals 🔗

India has only 0.75 psychiatrists per 100,000 population, far below the WHO’s recommended figure of more than three psychiatrists per 100,000. This shortage is even more acute in school settings. The Indian mental health system has an acute shortage of trained mental health professionals even for severe mental illness, and these professionals are mostly located in cities and larger towns, making them inaccessible to most children and families in rural areas.

Schools themselves are often reluctant to take on mental health responsibilities. The reasons include a lack of qualified personnel for such activities and an ambiguity about the school’s role when mental health concerns cross into what teachers perceive as purely medical territory. As a result, when students are identified as struggling, they are typically referred out to external professionals – a pathway that is frequently inaccessible to families with limited resources or mobility.

The treatment gap and stigma 🔗

Less than 1% of children with mental illnesses in India receive the necessary care, creating a massive treatment gap. Issues of wellbeing inequality related to cultural, gender and socio-economic factors also persist, with students with lower wellbeing levels more likely to drop out of school or repeat a grade.

According to data from India’s National Mental Health Survey, approximately 27% of children and adolescents experience depression, 26% have anxiety disorders, and 7% exhibit hyperactivity. These are not marginal figures – they represent a large proportion of any school’s student population. Yet stigma continues to prevent children from seeking help, and schools are rarely equipped to provide it proactively.

Promising steps and the road ahead 🔗

In response to these challenges, the Indian government’s National Education Policy (NEP 2020) and the National Curriculum Framework (NCF 2023) have both recognised wellbeing as a fundamental goal of education and have called on schools to promote student wellness, aligned with WHO recommendations for early detection and intervention. The integration of digital mental health tools – such as the Tele-MANAS helpline – into educational institutions is also being explored as a way to bridge the access gap.

Researchers propose that school-based mental health programs can deliver a “triple dividend” – improving current health outcomes of students, enhancing their academic and economic prospects, and benefiting future generations. For this potential to be realised, however, mental health must shift from the margins of education policy to its centre. That requires not just new laws, but consistent enforcement, dedicated funding, and trained personnel at every level of the school system.

The RTE Act and RMSA represent important first steps – affirming that safe, equitable, and quality schooling is a right, not a privilege. But a child-friendly learning environment is more than the absence of a cane. It is one where emotional distress is recognised, where teachers are trained to respond, and where seeking help is treated as a sign of strength, not weakness. Achieving that vision is still a work in progress.

What do you think? Should mental health counselling be made a mandatory service in every school under Indian education law – and who should be responsible for funding and staffing it? And given that policies like the RTE Act already exist, why do you think enforcement remains so inconsistent across states?

References

1. https://www.education.gov.in/rte
2. https://endcorporalpunishment.org/reports-on-every-state-and-territory/india/
3. https://nimhans.ac.in/tele-manas/