One of Britain's most prestigious independent schools is considering whether to ban homework after it was found to have caused an "epidemic" of depression and anxiety amongst teeangers.
Cheltenham Ladies' College could get rid of the "Victorian" practice of prep, according to reports in the Times.
Teachers at the 162-year-old boarding and day school will review the practice over the next five years, the newspaper reports.
They will also be trained to spot mental illness amongst pupils. In a bid to improve the mental health of its pupils, students will attend weekly meditation classes and be given twice as long to walk between lessons from September.
The school said it was looking into university-style "flip learning", where pupils read up on material before classes, as an alternative to homework in two or three subjects.
Eve Jardine-Young, the school's principal, said it was the "responsibility" of educators to safeguard the wellbeing of young people.
She said: ""We will have to look at how we are doing things. Will we even be doing prep?What we've been reflecting on a lot in the last few years are the big national trends and international trends in the worsening states of adolescent mental health.
"We've created this epidemic of anxiety for ourselves as a society, and if our obligation as educators is to try to the best of our ability to set young people up as best we can for whatever the future may hold, then to ignore this whole area or to trivialise it is really irresponsible."
Ms Jardine-Young warned that the average age at which depression was first diagnosed had almost halved from 29 in the 1960s to 15-and-a-half early this century.
She also said that smartphones, tablets and laptops are making it difficult to keep stress from the outside world coming into the college.
Two pupils have been taken out of the school for using abusive social media accounts under false names over the past two years.
Additional reporting by the Press Association
