Social, emotional and mental wellbeing in primary and secondary education [A] Evidence reviews for whole-school approaches NICE guideline [NG223]

National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (2022)

National Institute for Health and Care Excellence - n/a

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Evidence Categories

• Care setting: Educational Setting
• Population group: Primary school age (5-11)
• Population group: Secondary school/college age (11-18)
• Intervention: Health promotion/education Or Curriculum-based in
• Intervention: Didactic emotional development
• Intervention: Virtual and digital interventions
• Outcome: Social, emotional and mental wellbeing outcomes
• Outcome: School-related and academic outcomes
• Outcome: Other outcomes: unintended consequences/economic

Type of Evidence

NICE Underpinning Review

Overview

The authors state:

"This underpinning review aimed to answer this review question "What principles or combination of principles of whole-school approaches to promote social, emotional and mental wellbeing in children in primary education are effective and costeffective?"

Recommendations

The authors state:
 

"The quantitative data found an improvement in behaviour in both primary and secondary education in terms of bullying and victimisation and in improvement in the school climate in terms of wellbeing. Qualitative data report that whole school approaches were found to have a positive effect on classroom and school culture but reports that relationships between pupils were not improved. The positive effect on school culture and sense of wellbeing could in part explain the reduction in bullying and victimisation, as could the finding that pupils were more aware of the support that was available to them within the whole school approach. The lack of improvement in relationships between pupils might also partly explain the lack of impact detected by the intervention studies on emotional distress and social and emotional skills.

The qualitative data provided a good level of information about the perceived barriers to the implementation of whole school approaches, both from the perspective of pupils and teachers.and although it is not possible to attribute a causal relationship, it seems likely that the barriers identified are part of the reasons that whole school approaches may be less effective than they could be. The qualitative evidence highlighted areas that could contribute to making whole-school approaches unsuccessful such as lack of staff buy in, lack of leadership investment etc. These factors could be partially responsible for some of the interventions that did not show an effect. The data from the qualitative studies also identified some perceived facilitators that may contribute to the success of whole school approaches. These included training and support for staff, leadership buy-in and consistency."