Young people in England have ‘weaker’ socio-emotional skills, NFER finds

A new report from the National Foundation for Educational Research (NFER) has found that the socio-emotional skills of young people aged 15/16 in England are “significantly weaker” than their peers in comparator countries.The NFER warned that if left unaddressed, these weaknesses could have consequences for young people’s future employability.

The findings are part of the latest instalment of the five-year Skills Imperative 2035: Essential skills for tomorrow’s workforce research programme, funded by the Nuffield Foundation.

This report examines the socio-emotional skills of young people in England based on scores of assertiveness, co-operation, curiosity, emotional control, empathy, persistence and stress resistance, compared to those of other countries that were part of the latest Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA).

The report also compares young people’s skills in literacy, numeracy and problem-solving at age 15/16 to those in other PISA participating countries, to identify areas where England might be able to draw lessons from.

The research included case studies of seven high-performing education systems in Japan, Canada, Estonia, Portugal, Switzerland, Austria and Sweden, which offer key learnings for England.

The NFER noted that socio-emotional and cognitive skills are precursors to “vital” Essential Employment Skills (EES) that young adults develop, including communication, collaboration, problem-solving, organising, planning and prioritising work, creative thinking and information literacy.

Previous NFER research predicts that by 2035, workers will need to use EES more intensively in their jobs, but that up to seven million workers could lack the required skill level to carry out these roles effectively.

The new report found that while the UK has made progress in supporting young people’s literacy and numeracy skill development between the age of 15/16 and their early 20s, inequalities in cognitive skills amongst 15/16-year-olds have not seen the same improvement.

In light of this, it recommends that the government consider what more it could do to incentivise and support schools to promote the development of children’s socio-emotional skills. 

Jude Hillary, the programme’s Principal Investigator and NFER’s co-head of UK Policy and Practice, said: “Socio-emotional skills are very important for young people‘s employment prospects as well as their life satisfaction and general wellbeing. This research suggests we need to do more, earlier in children’s lives to support their social and emotional development and give them the best possible start. If we fail to prioritise these skills, we are potentially not just limiting individual wellbeing and potential – we are weakening the future workforce and economy of the UK.”

Daniel Kebede, general secretary of the National Education Union, added: “The exam factory culture in England’s schools is to blame for students lagging so far behind other nations in socio-emotional skills. Another driver is an obsession with memorisation of knowledge over the development of important skills, and exam-only assessment at the end of courses. The creation of rigid, overloaded curricula is also alienating for young people. 

“SATs, the EBacc and Progress 8 must be ended. Their presence forces the arts out of the curriculum and drives the toxic school league table culture that now overrides everything else. We agree high quality early education is essential for children’s development. It should be accessible to all families, yet for too many this is not the case. We also need to see greater support for Maintained Nursery Schools (MNS) to provide the highest quality early education, especially for disadvantaged families and children with SEND. The government must guarantee their future.”