School social-and-emotional learning is not a fashion. It is government policy in many countries, and it has two decades of research behind it. We gathered the evidence so we could build on what already works — and so we could speak to Indian schools with proof rather than opinion.
213 studies · 270,034 studentsWhat they do. SEL built around five skills — self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, relationship skills and responsible decision-making — taught school-wide rather than as a one-off.
Evidence. The largest evidence base in the world: the Durlak meta-analysis, plus twenty years of follow-up studies showing gains in behaviour, wellbeing and grades.
What they do. A national whole-school approach built on eight Department for Education principles, SEL taught through PSHE, and Mental Health Support Teams placed in schools for early help.
Evidence. Backed by NICE guidance and Education Endowment Foundation trials, including the CBT-based ‘Healthy Minds’ study on resilience and wellbeing.
What they do. ‘Be You’, run by Beyond Blue with Early Childhood Australia and headspace, gives every school free training, tools and consultant support — building on ten years of KidsMatter and MindMatters.
Evidence. A rare example of a single, national, well-resourced program covering early years through secondary.
Honest note: The Australian Council for Educational Research notes that evidence on wellbeing and academic impact is still limited — implementation quality matters.
What they do. SEL is taught within Character & Citizenship Education and the ‘21st Century Competencies’ framework — formal national policy since 2005, from primary to pre-university.
Evidence. Positioned as core to student outcomes: wellbeing, resilience, and later school and career success. A strong model of SEL as everyday curriculum rather than an add-on.
What they do. Programs such as ‘Four Steps To My Future’ deliver universal, school-based wellbeing sessions to young adolescents.
Evidence. Pilots show significant gains in self-esteem and emotion regulation, held at follow-up. A Ghana study found significant gains in wellbeing and academic engagement, at medium-to-large effect.
Honest note: The research base across Sub-Saharan Africa is still thin — an opportunity, and a reason to measure carefully.
What they do. Peru’s Ministry of Education, with the World Bank, built an SEL curriculum for around 700 public schools in high-violence districts. Brazil ran ‘Um Compasso Para Aprender’ across 84–90 public primary schools.
Evidence. Large randomised trials with thousands of students — a serious test of SEL in low-resource, high-stress settings.
Honest note: One Rio de Janeiro trial found small negative effects — proof that a poorly-delivered program can backfire, and that design and training are everything.
The Durlak meta-analysis was published in 2011 — before the smartphone was universal in a classroom, and long before a child could take their worst night to a chatbot. Everything that has happened since has made the relational half of a young person’s education more important, not less.
Sessions in order, real practice rather than listening, focused on specific skills, and explicit about what is being taught. This is exactly our practice-not-watching model.
The strongest programs reach all three. A child who learns to pause on Saturday and comes home to an unchanged house does not keep the skill.
Across every country in this brief, the quality of the adults delivering it predicts the result. Our teacher orientation is not optional.
Before/after surveys are core to our model, not an extra — and they are how a school knows whether it bought something real.
The honest headline. Globally, SEL has strong evidence for skills, behaviour, wellbeing and even grades — and a real economic return — but only when it is well-designed, well-taught and measured. Done badly, it does nothing, or worse. That is exactly our opportunity in India: bringing a proven, well-built program to a market that mostly has one-off talks.
Durlak et al. (2011), meta-analysis of 213 SEL programs — CASEL and the Learning Policy Institute (casel.org · learningpolicyinstitute.org).
Belfield et al. (2015), ‘The Economic Value of Social and Emotional Learning’, Center for Benefit-Cost Studies of Education, Columbia University, in the Journal of Benefit-Cost Analysis (cbcse.org).
United Kingdom: GOV.UK on mental health and wellbeing support in schools; NICE; Education Endowment Foundation (‘Healthy Minds’).
Australia: Be You (beyou.edu.au); Hoare et al. (2020), ANZJP; ACER KidsMatter evaluation.
Singapore: Ministry of Education — Social and Emotional Learning within Character & Citizenship Education (moe.gov.sg).
Africa: ‘Four Steps To My Future’ pilot (PMC10953368); Ghana SEL study, Nature Scientific Reports (2025).
Latin America: Peru Ministry of Education and World Bank SEL evaluation (J-PAL); ‘Um Compasso Para Aprender’ randomised controlled trial, Child Development (2021).
India: NCERT, Mental Health and Wellbeing of School Students — survey of 379,842 students across Classes 6–12 (2022).
The AI-age context: World Economic Forum, Future of Jobs Report 2025; Common Sense Media national survey on teens and AI companions (2025); Pew Research Center on teen chatbot use (2025).
Figures are reported from the studies above; emeeqo has not independently reproduced them. The economic-return study was conducted in US dollars — we express the ratio rather than converting it, because the ratio is the finding, not the currency.
Start with a pilot — one teacher session, one student session, and a before/after survey you can read for yourself.