Four in ten Pupils don’t feel like they Belong at School

Pupils who strongly disagreed that they belonged at school scored 7.72 points lower on Attainment 8 than those who strongly agreed, almost a full GCSE grade lower across all eight subjects, according to a Department for Education report published today.

The study links PISA 2022 student questionnaire responses to key stage 2 and key stage 4 attainment data in the National Pupil Database. It was written by Pallavi Banerjee of the University of Cambridge, and covers 4,763 pupils from 165 schools who took part in PISA in November and December 2022, most of them in Year 11. The attainment gap holds after controlling for prior attainment at key stage 2, free school meals eligibility, gender, ethnicity, SEN and bullying.

Who feels they belong

Nationally, 63.08% of pupils agreed or strongly agreed that they felt they belonged at school. Boys were significantly more likely to agree than girls, at 66.40% against 58.09%. Pupils with SEN reported the lowest belonging at 56.62%, followed by FSM eligible pupils at 58.20%, though neither gap was quite significant at the 5% level. White pupils were least likely to report belonging at 60.26%, significantly below Asian pupils at 70.17% and Black pupils at 72.13%.

On the OECD’s composite belonging index, almost every subgroup in the analysis scored below the OECD average for all pupils, with significant gaps by gender, FSM eligibility and SEN.

SEN pupils report the highest bullying

Pupils with SEN reported significantly higher levels of bullying than the OECD average, and significantly higher than pupils without SEN. Girls, FSM eligible pupils and White pupils reported higher bullying than the average, though not always significantly. Asian pupils reported significantly lower bullying than both the average and White pupils.

How belonging is measured changes the result

The headline attainment finding rests on a single questionnaire item, “I feel like I belong at school”. When belonging was measured instead using the six item composite index, no significant association with attainment was found in either model specification. The report concludes the single item is the cleaner and more precise measure, because the composite conflates belonging with related concepts including bullying.

The report makes no causal claim. It notes PISA was administered in the same academic year the cohort sat their GCSEs, and that the findings apply to 15 year olds only.

Policy context

The research supports the Schools White Paper, Every Child Achieving and Thriving, which requires schools to monitor wellbeing and belonging by 2029. The report recommends longitudinal tracking and further work on pathways such as attendance.

The full report is on gov.uk, reference RR1645.