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The extra £12.8bn set aside for education spending in England over the next three years will, in the words of education secretary Estelle Morris, be used to deliver “higher standards, better behaviour, and more choice”.

It is difficult to take exception to any of these objectives, but, like so much that is said by government ministers, they are open to interpretation. For example, there are three principal ways to achieve better behaviour in schools: work to improve the behaviour of badly behaved pupils, throw them out, or ensure that they are never admitted in the first place. So far the only option that doesn’t seem to have been explored thoroughly is the first.

As the report published this week by the Mental Health Foundation makes clear, this attitude among schools has to change. The media frenzy surrounding the publication of GCSE and A level results bears witness to the emphasis on higher academic standards in schools, no matter what the cost to pupils who may have a negative impact on a school’s performance. But schools owe it to all children to help them make the most of their chances in life and give them opportunities to prosper, not just the high fliers.

Children with emotional and behavioural difficulties are among those whose profile Community Care is trying to raise in its Changing Minds: Better Mental Health Care for Children campaign. Teacher training must place much more emphasis on the pastoral care of children in education, as the Mental Health Foundation report rightly points out.

Child protection as well as mental health needs should form a significant part of this additional training, as the case of Norfolk schoolgirl Lauren Wright has made plain. These are important issues for special schools and pupil referral units, all of which should have someone senior to take responsibility for co-ordinating mental health provision and providing a link to the child and adolescent mental health service. But these issues are equally important for mainstream schools, especially as social care, education and health services, propelled by the children’s fund and Quality Protects, work ever more closely together. The alternative is to fail the very children these initiatives were designed to help.