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Systematic Review
To systematically review the peer review literature, policy documents and grey literature examining evidence on the effectiveness of school and out-of-school interventions implemented in the UK which aim to enhance children and young people’s social and emotional skills.
The search process yielded 9,472 school articles and 12,329 out-of-school articles. Duplicates, interventions not relevant and interventions that did not meet the inclusion criteria were removed. A total of 113 school-based interventions and 222 out-of-schol interventions were identified. Of the 113 school interventions, 39 fulfilled the inclusion criteria and therefore underwent the review process. In terms of the out-of-school interventions, 55 interventions fulfilled the inclusion criteria and underwent the review process. Interventions were classified as: (i) interventions with a competence enhancement focus and (ii) interventions aimed at reducing problem behaviour through the development of SES.
The synthesis of findings from this review of 94 studies of programmes implemented across the school and out-of-school settings in the UK shows that well-designed and well-implemented SES development programmes can lead to a range of positive educational, health and social and emotional wellbeing outcomes for children and adolescents. At the time of conducting this review, a number of large-scale evaluation studies were underway in both settings, which will add to this base of evidence. While acknowledging that this review may not have captured every evaluation study within the timeframe available, the systematic approach adopted enables some conclusions to be drawn regarding the nature and quality of the current evidence available from a representative group of programme evaluations in the UK.
The majority of school interventions that were identified were universal social and emotional skill-based interventions, violence prevention interventions, bullying prevention interventions and substance misuse prevention interventions. Of the 39 interventions, 24 were adopted from international evidence based programmes. the majority of studies evaluating these interventions have been carried out in the last five years (71.8%) were evaluated using a RCT or quasi-experimental design (84.6%) and were sourced from published articles (84.6%). Regarding age range, 46.2% of the interventions were implemented with children in primary school, 20.5% were implemented across the primary school and secondary school, and 33.3% were implemented with young people in secondary school. The majority of interventions (56.4%) were short-term interventions and 38.5% of interventions were implemented over three years or more.
The majority of interventions were developed in the UK (83.6%) and evaluated in the last five years (81.8%). A total of 35 interventions were drawn from unpublished reports (63.6%). Interventions were predominantly evaluated using a pre-post design with no control group (78%). Five intervenntions (9.1%) were evaluated using a randomised control trial and seven interventions (12.7%) were evaluated using a quasi-experimental design. In terms of the participants, the majority of interventions were implemented with young people (aged 13-30) determined at risk of developing social and emotional problems. Over half of the interventions in less than one year (54.5%).
The review findings show that there is a wide range of programmes being implemented across the UK that can lead to positive life outcomes for young people across the education, health, social and employment domains and reduce the risk for negative youth outcomes such as antisocial behaviour, crime, substance misuse and mental health problems. However, the quality of the evidence that is currently available is variable across the school and out-of-school settings. Drawing on the current findings, when placed in the context of the international evidence, there are a number of insights that can be gleaned for the policy, practice and research.
This review found that there is good quality evidence regarding school-based programmes, which show consistent evidence of their positive impact on studies' social and emotional competencies and educational outcomes. The findings support the effectiveness of universal social and emotional school-based programmes, targeted interventions for students at higher risk, violence and substance misuse prevention programmes, and the adoption of whole school approaches to bullying prevention. The scaling up of these programmes, including their integration into the school curriculum and their optimal implementation within the context of a whole school approach, warrants further investigation.
Regarding out-of-school interventions, some robust studies provided evidence of effectiveness in terms of improving young people's SES, however, the majority of studies provided limited evidence as a result of poor quality evaluations. The evidence base needs to be strengthened in order to determine the value of current out-of school programmes and in particular, which approaches are most effective. Based on the findings from the more rigorous studies, there is evidence that out-of-school youth programmes have the potential to lead to positive outcomes for disadvantaged and socially excluded youth, including improving young people's self-esteem, social skills, engagement in school and society and reducing behaviour problems. There is good quality evidence regarding the effectiveness of family-based interventions that span the home and school settings.
The authors conclude that social and emotional skills are a key asset and resource for the positive development of young people. The synthesis of findings from this review supports the case for a sustained policy focus on the delivery of the high quality interventions for young people across the school and out-of-school settings. More comprehensive UK evaluation studies will strengthen the evidence base for anchoring effective programmes and initiatives in policies that support positive child and youth development across the life course and will facilitate the sustainability and mainstreaming of effective practices.