天美影视

A new study from The University of Manchester has found that a well-known mental health intervention for children may be no more effective than the usual social and emotional learning (SEL) programmes already being taught in primary schools.

The research, published in the , was led by experts from the Manchester Institute of Education working alongside colleagues from the University of Dundee and Necmettin Erbakan University in Turkey. After looking at whether Passport: Skills for Life helped to improve children's mental wellbeing, they found that it appeared to make little difference compared to what schools were already doing.

Passport is designed to help children aged 9 to 11 manage their emotions, cope with stress and build good relationships. It includes 18 weekly lessons covering topics like feelings, friendships and handling change.

Teachers who were trained in the programme delivered these lessons in class - the idea was that by helping children to build strong emotional and social skills, it could prevent mental health problems like anxiety and depression.

The study involved over 2,400 children from 62 primary schools across Greater Manchester and nearby areas. Some schools used the Passport programme, while others continued with their usual teaching.

After closely studying the results, researchers found that the Passport lessons didn鈥檛 appear to lead to better outcomes for the children. There was no significant improvement in mental health symptoms, such as internalising symptoms, or in other areas like emotional regulation, wellbeing or bullying. This means that children who took part in the programme were no better off than those who followed the normal school curriculum.

The research team looked into several possible reasons for the lack of results. One idea was that the programme wasn鈥檛 different enough from what schools were already doing - many schools in the study were already using other SEL programmes. In fact, almost two-thirds of teachers said they used some kind of SEL teaching before the study even started, and about 60% of the Passport content overlapped with these existing lessons.

鈥淭he quality of universal SEL education has significantly improved over the last two decades, meaning new programmes face a higher bar for showing additional impact. This highlights the excellent work already being done in schools to nurture children's mental health," Neil added.

The research also raises questions about whether programmes developed in one country - like Passport, which was originally from Canada - will work the same way in another. Cultural differences may affect how well these interventions work.

The researchers plan to keep studying the data, and looking into whether the programme has any long-term benefits, works better for certain groups of children or is good value for money.