Policies, practices and assessments that enhance social and emotional skills

Governments recognise social and emotional skills to be important skills to be developed through schooling. The skills most often targeted in national curricula include autonomy, responsibility, tolerance, critical thinking and intercultural understanding. Countries mobilise a variety of curricular and extracurricular activities to promote these skills. Most national curricula include subjects that target students’ social and emotional skills, either in traditional ways, such as through physical and health education, civic and citizenship education, and moral and/or religious education, or via dedicated subjects. Some countries also incorporate the development of social and emotional skills throughout the core curriculum. Extracurricular activities that are likely to positively affect social and emotional development are also widely available. They include sports, arts clubs, student councils and voluntary work. While countries do not require schools to employ standardised assessments of social and emotional skills, they usually provide guidelines to help schools assess students. Nevertheless, not many education systems provide detailed guidance on how to enhance social and emotional development. While this provides schools and teachers flexibility in designing their own lessons, this may not help teachers who are not sure how to best teach these skills.