Why Belonging in School Matters
Children’s wellbeing is increasingly recognised as deeply connected to their school experiences. Shaped by relationships and a sense of belonging, their wellbeing develops through their school journey and is influenced by daily interactions and experiences that impact on children’s sense of self and their engagement with learning. Over the past two decades, and especially post-COVID-19, the link between school life and children’s wellbeing has continued to gain momentum (Chzhen et al., 2022; Crean et al., 2023). In Ireland, educational policies highlight wellbeing as central to helping children reach their potential from early years education to second level schooling (DES, 2019; 2023).
The Children’s School Lives (CSL) study is funded by the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment (NCCA). It tracks the experiences of over 4,000 students throughout the primary school journey, from Junior Infants to Sixth Class. Report No. 7 (Sloan et al., 2024) focuses on children’s wellbeing in Irish primary schools and is part of this wider mixed method, longitudinal study, tracking changes across two age cohorts of children (Cohort A; Jnr. Infants to 2nd Class & Cohort B; 2nd – 6th Class), their families, and educational stakeholders, across nearly 200 schools, over time (2019-2024).
Framed by Seligman’s (2011) PERMA model of wellbeing and OECD indicators (OECD 2019; 2024), this policy brief concentrates on the ‘R’ for Relationships (Belonging) within the PERMA framework. Drawing insights from the comprehensive report, this policy brief underscores the importance of relationships and belonging which emerged as key indicators of wellbeing.
Figure 1: The PERMA model of wellbeing (Seligman, 2011)
Summary of Key Insights
- Declining Belonging: Sense of belonging declines from 5th to 6th Class, with girls reporting lower levels than boys.
- Feeling Cared For: This is influenced by friendships, physical spaces (e.g., sensory rooms perceived as ‘caring’ vs. principal’s office as ‘uncaring’), and teacher support. Feeling cared for drops from 2nd to 6th Class, more significantly for girls, with boys reporting higher levels by 6th Class.
- Classmate Support: This peaked during the COVID-19 lockdown but declined afterward. Gender differences in feelings of classmate support were higher among girls in younger years but lessened by 5th and 6th Class.
- Peer Problems: There were fewer issues during remote learning, but peer problems increased after returning to school, with boys experiencing more peer issues throughout primary schooling.
- Bullying: While infrequent, reports of having been bullied increased from 4th to 6th Class, especially for girls, with boys more often involved in carrying out bullying behaviours. 70% of children reported never being bullied, but only 49% in 2nd Class report the same.
- Online Bullying: This was reported by 6% of 2nd Class and 4% of 6th Class children as occurring weekly.
Findings
Belonging in School
Primary school children most often feel happy and safe, but their sense of belonging at school decreased from 5th to 6th Class (Cohort B)[i]. As Figure 2 demonstrates, girls reported slightly lower levels of belonging than boys.
Figure 2: Children’s Feelings of School Belonging (Cohort B)
At all time-points within the study, children responded as ‘usually’ feeling cared for. In Cohort B (2nd-6th Class), however, children’s feelings of being cared for decreased over time. Across both age Cohorts (Jnr. Infants to 2nd Class; 2nd Class to 6th Class), girls initially rated their feelings of being cared for as higher than boys, in the earlier years of primary school. By 6th Class, this trend had reversed, with boys having a higher rate of feeling cared for. As Figure 3 outlines, the decrease in feeling cared for was significant for girls (-0.25), but not for boys (-0.08).
Figure 3: Children’s Feelings of Being Cared For (Cohort B)
While these gender differences are detailed further in Report 8b (Devine et al., 2024), the remainder of this policy brief will focus on the importance of positive peer and teacher relationships, along with inclusive school environments, in fostering students’ sense of belonging.
Caring Classrooms: How Relationships and Space Shape School Belonging
Many children felt either uncertain or positive about their sense of belonging in school, influenced by friendships, feeling liked, and experiences of exclusion or loneliness. Feeling cared for by teachers, which declined over time (especially for girls), and peer support were key factors. Classrooms with lower peer support were noted as also exhibiting higher bullying rates (D’Urso et al., 2022), underscoring the importance of fostering social cohesion and inclusivity. The importance of peer support peaked during the 2020 lockdown but dropped to its lowest in 6th Class. The school’s physical environment also impacted belonging, with children identifying ‘caring’ and ‘uncaring’ spaces. The use of Photovoice methodology (Gleasure et al., 2024) highlighted some of the places children identified as caring, including a school fish tank, a teacher’s desk and a sensory room (Figure 4). Children also identified places that brought more negative feelings, including the school yard and the principal’s office (Figure 5).
Figure 4: The school sensory room as a ‘caring space.’
Interviewer: Why is the entrance to the principal’s office uncaring?
Girl: Because you might get detention.
Interviewer: You might get detention when you are there. Have you ever gotten detention?
Girl: Never.
Interviewer: Do you know of anyone that has, or have you heard of anyone that has?
Girl: No, but I never went up there yet…
(Girl, 2nd Class, DEIS, Co-ed, Urban)
Figure 5: The principal’s office as a potentially ‘uncaring space.’
Friendships as Sources of both Support and Anxiety
Playtime supported peer friendships for younger children, while socialising outside school mattered more in senior years. Close friendships fostered belonging but also caused stress and anxiety, particularly through conflicts or exclusion, which increased with age and more significantly for girls. Interviews revealed infrequent negative behaviours in school, though older children noted witnessing physical and emotional incidents such as name-calling, pushing and hair-pulling. Around 5-6% of 4th to 6th Class students reported being bullied around once a week or more, compared to 11% in 2nd Class (Figure 6). Further, around a quarter of students in 4th to 6th Class reported having been bullied once, twice or a few times, compared to a much higher proportion of 2nd Class students (40%; Figure 6). The majority of students at all class levels reported that they had never taken part in bullying others (around 90% in 4th to 6th Class, and 86% in 2nd Class).
Figure 6: How often have you been bullied in the last few months?
In 4th Class, boys had more peer issues and bullying incidents, but by 6th Class, this trend had reversed with girls reporting that they had witnessed bullying more frequently. Within the digital space, 6% of children in 2nd Class reported being bullied online or through social media around once a week or more, with a slightly lower figure reported by children in 6th Class (4%)
Conclusion: Research and Policy Implications
Report No. 7 from the Children’s School Lives study emphasises the need for teachers to nurture positive relationships and create inclusive, respectful classroom environments that support children’s wellbeing. Equally, this has highlighted how difficulties in relationships, particularly among peers, can impact negatively on feelings of belonging in schools. In 2023, nearly 50% of 2nd Class children reported experiencing bullying, highlighting a need for targeted interventions, especially among younger children who are also increasingly affected by online bullying. This is of particular concern during ongoing discussions around providing positive and safe spaces for children in their increasingly digitised worlds.
Additionally, gendered differences in belonging and wellbeing require further attention, as do the declining happiness and rising anxiety levels observed in children as they progress towards their senior years in primary schooling. This is of particular concern for those preparing to transition to second-level education.
These findings illustrate the nuanced patterns in children’s experiences of belonging and how these are reflected in feelings of wellbeing in school. In fostering more supportive and inclusive school environments, the following is recommended:
1. Promote school belonging through inclusive and relationship-based classroom practices
- Continued expansion of evidence-based wellbeing and social and emotional learning programmes, including the Continuing Professional Development (CPD) of teachers on wellbeing and relationally focused teaching strategies, supported by the Primary Curriculum Framework (DES, 2023; NCCA, 2023) emphasis on wellbeing and social learning.
2. Target bullying prevention efforts at younger children
- Embed anti-bullying programmes and practices from the first years of primary school onwards, addressing both in-person and online bullying behaviours from formative years.
- Encourage restorative practice and peer support systems to strengthen social relationships and reduce bullying.
3. Support gender-specific wellbeing needs
- Tailor wellbeing interventions and programmes to address gender differences in how belonging is experienced in primary schools, particularly girls’ increasing anxiety and decreased peer support in senior classes.
4. Nurture wellbeing in transitions
- Support the provision of more integrated approaches to enhance wellbeing in the senior years of primary school and enhance inter-school communication as children progress to secondary schooling.
5. Investment in further research on wellbeing in school
- Fund independent evaluations of the implementation and effectiveness of home-grown school-based wellbeing programmes and interventions (e.g., Weaving Wellbeing and A Lust for Life).
- Support collaborative research on school wellbeing between schools, higher education institutions, programme developers, and policy makers.
- Support research on the mandatory use of School Self-Evaluation process of wellbeing promotion review as part of the Wellbeing Policy Statement and Framework for Practice (DES, 2019).
- Ensure children’s perspectives on wellbeing in school and wellbeing programmes and interventions are used to inform school practices and to ensure that they are grounded in lived experiences.
Sloan, S., Martinez Sainz, G., Devine, D., Symonds, J., Ioannidou, O., Moore, B., Davies, A., Bohnert, M., Stynes, H., Senior, J., Osborne, K., Crean, M,. Barrow, N., Grieves, M., Gleasure, S., Donegan, A., Samonova, E., Farrell, E., O’Giobuin, R., Smith, A., Farrell, J. (2024). Children’s School Lives: Children’s Wellbeing In Irish Primary Schools (2019 To 2023), Report 7 https://cslstudy.ie/downloads/CSL_7_Wellbeing.pdf
References
Chzhen, Y., Symonds, J., Devine, D., Mikolai, J., Harkness, S., Sloan, S. and Martinez Sainz, G. (2022) Learning in a pandemic: Primary school children’s emotional engagement with remote schooling during the spring 2020 COVID-19 lockdown in Ireland. Child Indicators Research, 15(4), pp.1517–1538.https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12187-022-09922-8
Crean, M., Devine, D., Moore, B., Martinez-Sainz, G., Symonds, J., Sloan, S. and Farrell, E. (2023) Social class, COVID-19 and care: Schools on the front line in Ireland during the COVID-19 pandemic, British Journal of Sociology of Education. vol. 44, no. 3, pp. 452-466.https://doi.org/10.1080/01425692.2023.2174077
Department of Education and Skills (2019) Wellbeing policy statement and framework for practice. Dublin: The Stationery Office.
Department of Education (2023) Primary curriculum framework for primary and special schools. Dublin: The Stationery Office.
Devine, D., Ioannidou, O., Sloan, S., Martinez-Sainz, G., Symonds, J., Bohnert, M., Greaves, M., Moore, B., Smith, K., Crean, M., Davies, A., Jones, M., Barrow, N., Crummy, A., Gleasure, S., Samonova, E., Smith, A., Stynes, H. and Donegan, A. (2024)Equalities in Children’s School Lives – The Impact of Gender: Report 8b, UCD School of Education, UCD, Dublin. https://cslstudy.ie/downloads/CSL_8b_Gender.pdf
D’Urso, G., Symonds, J., Sloan, S., and Devine, D. (2022) ‘Bullies, victims, and meanies: the role of child and classmate social and emotional competencies.’ Social Psychology of Education, 25, pp. 293–312. https://doi.org/10.1007/s1121802109684-1
Gleasure, S., Devine, D., Martinez Sainz, G., Sloan, S., and Symonds, J. (2024) ‘Understanding children’s experiences of care in their school lives through participatory research methods: a comparative analysis of focus group discussions and photovoice.’ International Journal of Qualitative Methods. https://doi.org/10.1177/16094069241286849
NCCA (National Council for Curriculum and Assessment). (2023) Primary Curriculum Framework. Dublin: National Council for Curriculum and Assessment, Department of Education, Government of Ireland.
OECD (2019) PISA 2018 results (Volume I): What students know and can do. Paris: OECD Publishing.
OECD (2024) Education policy outlook 2024: Reshaping teaching into a thriving profession from ABCs to AI. Paris: OECD Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1787/dd5140e4-en
Seligman, M. E. P. (2011) Flourish. New York, NY: Simon and Schuster.
[i] In waves 4 and 5, Cohort B children in 5th and 6th Class responded to six items about their feelings of belongingness in school, including how well they made friends and were liked in school, whether they felt left out of things in school, and whether they felt lonely, awkward or out of place (OECD, 2019). Children responded on a 5-point scale from 1 (‘strongly disagree’) to 5 (‘strongly agree’), with ‘undecided’ as the midpoint. Average scores across all items were generated (with higher scores reflecting stronger feelings of belonging).