This review explored the research regarding the effects of school-based wellbeing interventions on student academic achievement (N = 320,505) and the wellbeing-related outcomes (N = 411,535) of social-emotional adjustment, behavioural adjustment, cognitive adjustment, and internalising symptoms. There were 75 studies that qualified and were included in the final analyses which involved 432 extracted outcomes from students 5 to 18 years of age. This review found that school-based wellbeing programs had a small positive effect on academic achievement, equivalent to two months of additional impact (g = 0.17). Wellbeing programs had small to moderate effects on wellbeing-related measures: social-emotional adjustment (g = 0.14), behavioural adjustment (g = 0.15) , cognitive adjustment (g = 0.18), and a moderate impact on internalising symptoms (g = 0.20) compared to 'business as usual', consistent with previous reviews.
Copyright 2020 Evidence for Learning, Social Ventures Australia.
This Review report is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International Licence. Permission may be granted for derivatives. Contact Evidence for Learning for more information.
This project was commissioned and funded by the Evidence for Learning (E4L) and VicHealth.
Study registration: PROSPERO CRD42020176599, 28/04/2020, www.york.ac.uk/inst/crd