Addressing the Confederation of School Trusts, Bridget Phillipson made her pitch for school belonging: “Every child should go to a school where they are free to be themselves, free to make friends, free to explore their talents… (Where they know) deep down inside, they belong”.
But does it make sense for the education secretary to be steering the school system towards the notion of belonging in her drive to improve inclusion? Is the evidence with her that it will deliver?
Meet Marina. I met her while undertaking my 2021 study, Place and belonging in school: Why it matters today.
Marina stood at the threshold of her school life, eagerly awaiting what was to come. Her sense of joy and anticipation stretched to the very tips of her fingers. Her school is a place of welcome and belonging. ‘I belong here,’ she wrote in caption to a picture of herself basking in the rays of a rising sun.
Sadly, the dawn of a new school day brings anxiety and dread for many children and young people.
What, if anything, can we do to ensure Marina’s experience is more universally shared?
System realities
It’s a pressing issue. According to PISA’s 2018 results, nearly one in three felt then that they didn’t belong, and the signs are that young people’s sense of school belonging has only declined since the pandemic.
Children from disadvantaged communities are twice as likely to feel they don’t belong as their more advantaged peers; neurodiverse students, three times more likely to drop out.
Many are voting with their feet. Exclusions and suspensions are rising and young people with the greatest needs find themselves handed the ultimate ‘red card’ of exclusion. The disaffected search for ‘belonging’ elsewhere. The excluded become the exploited.
The long-term impact of these trends extends beyond individuals. The lifetime cost of a young person being permanently excluded has been estimated at £170,000. We are haemorrhaging the human potential of many young people.
Benefits of belonging
‘Belonging is that sense of being somewhere you can be confident that you will fit in and be safe in your identity: a feeling of being at home in a place’.
In schools where belonging is the guiding principle, more young people experience a sense of connectedness and friendship, perform better academically and come to believe in themselves.
The benefits are shared more widely too. Their teachers feel more professionally fulfilled and their families and communities more accepted.
In effect, there is a cycle of connectedness: reduced student absenteeism and increased student motivation conspire to change the school climate, benefitting staff and students alike and increasing their sense of wellbeing and agency.
Addressing a sense of school belonging has been found to close the achievement gap by between 50 and 60 per cent and has many benefits that stretch into adulthood.
What belonging looks like
School belonging doesn’t happen by accident. As I showed in my 2022 book, Compassionate leadership for school belonging, it’s nurtured by compassionate and relational leadership and supported by whole-school practices designed to create a climate of welcome and belonging for all.
In such schools, there is little talk of ‘tough’ sanction-based behaviour policies which rely on social isolation but a commitment to a broad set of principles:
- Safety – physical and emotional,
- Presence – knowing and accepting each child,
- Voice – staff, pupil and family participation,
- Connectivity – respectful and enabling relationships,
- Agency – a sense that each of us is making a difference.
In short, Bridget Phillipson is promoting a mindset of possibilities supported by a robust research base, not only in terms of its many positive impacts but also with regards to its implementation.
Indeed, a system ‘nudge’ towards belong is long overdue.
How young people experience school life – the degree to which they feel they belong in that place called school – will shape their belief in themselves, and their readiness to encounter the world they live in.
And it just might help with the sector’s many workforce challenges too.
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