A decline in young people’s mental health since the end of covid is more oblivious than ever. According to the mental health of young people and children report in 2022, there has been an 8.3% increase in probable mental health disorder amongst 17–19-year-olds since 2021. Young people around the UK are calling out for a solution to teach them about mental health and ways to deal with it. Without one, these alarming statistics will only increase.
FUTURE GENERATION ASKS, IPS LTD DELIVERS
For this reason, IPS have been working on a new student enrichment portal for the past year. We are currently working with both Chichester college and NAMS, the student enrichment portal provides teachers with informative student enrichment tutorial videos with real life speakers who talk about their experiences with the relevant topic. These tutorials cover the most relevant topics to this mental health ‘crisis’ such as the stigma of mental health, methods to reduce stress, depression and anxiety etc.
The student enrichment portal does not only cover mental health, but it also covers topics that are extremely relevant to college students. For example, addiction is covered throughout numerous tutorials; a topic very pertinent to young people of the age 16-19 who may start to become more experimental with certain substances as they get older. Providing the right information with the right guidance is as important as ever, for this reason we decided to bring in guest speakers who have first-hand experience with addiction. For example, Simon is a recovering alcoholic who is a part of a sobriety fellowship, in that video he talks about his experiences with substance abuse, how he fell into the loop of addiction and how he got into recovery. Every video contains a guest speaker like this regardless of the topic in order to influence and inspire students watching the tutorial as we believe this is the purpose of educating.
Furthermore, a youth MP named Izzy Garbutt turned heads across the UK recently with her speech to parliament. Her speech went into detail about the problems of our failed education system and demanded that young people be taught more relevant topics about life rather than “a quadratic formula”. One sentence she used which really stuck with me is, “We are pleading for more emphasis on employability, communication skills and personal well-being”. For the last year, IPS have been trying to create this “curriculum for life”, not only by creating educational videos for wellbeing, mental health and addiction but also skills that have never been taught in a classroom. For example, basic budgeting and money handling is covered through our Enrichment Portal, a life skill more important than ever due to the recent energy crisis. Numerous videos just like that one is covered through our career options and life skills in order to help benefit young people when they get out into the working world.
For most, these problems with the education system have only become visible in the last 3 to 4 months. This puts IPS Ltd. in eminent position, as we have spent the last year coming up with ideas, failing and going back to the drawing board countless times to make sure our tutorials are of enough quality to be implemented into the education sector. Now, our focus has switched to getting these tutorials into colleges and schools up and down the country. Our managing director, Robert Powell, described IPS’ student enrichment tutorials as “a breath of new life into such an outdated education system” and is eager to invite you to IPS’ new Student Enrichment Webinar which is taking place on Tuesday 31st January at 10.30am. I really hope you can join us.