Relationships & Belonging

NICE NG223 and the DfE/PHE eight-principle framework both treat ethos, environment and relationships as foundational to wellbeing provision. Statutory attendance guidance makes the same connection from the other direction: children attend places where they feel known and safe. Belonging is therefore not a pastoral extra — it runs through attendance, behaviour, inclusion and safeguarding at once.

• Who is not attending clubs, trips, residentials and performances — disaggregated by SEND, disadvantage, ethnicity and gender.
• Which children are repeatedly removed from the socially significant parts of the day for intervention or sanction.
• How many children could not name a trusted adult if you asked them this week.
• Playtime and lunchtime: staffing, training, structure and equipment, versus the number of incidents they generate.
• Patterned absence — particular days and sessions — read as social rather than only as attendance.
• Bullying records: whether reporting routes are usable by children with communication needs, and whether cases actually close.
• Pupil and parent voice on belonging, asked directly rather than inferred from a satisfaction score.

Relationships education is statutory in primary schools, covering friendship, respect, boundaries and loneliness. Delivered well it is a genuine part of provision; delivered as an annual assembly it is not. EEF SEL guidance is clear that explicit teaching only works when reinforced in the everyday running of the school.

The EEF's mentoring evidence is a useful discipline against over-claiming: relationship-based provision is worth doing for its own sake, but should not be presented to governors as an attainment strategy on evidence that does not support that.

• Lunchtime staff see the most social difficulty and typically receive the least training. That is the highest-return training decision most primary schools can make.
• Staff turnover breaks relationships. Where a child's plan depends on one adult, there must be a second.
• Adults model relationship quality. How staff speak to each other in front of children is part of the curriculum.
• Staff who feel they belong are better at building belonging; wellbeing and workload are part of this, not adjacent to it.
• Every serious incident should end in repair, and staff need to know what repair looks like in your school.

Families who do not feel welcome do not raise concerns early, and their children notice. Consider practically who finds your school easy to approach and who does not — families new to English, families with their own difficult school histories, families of children who are frequently in trouble — and what would change that.

Parents of children with SEND often report social exclusion as their greatest worry, above attainment. Asking them about invitations, parties, clubs and friendships gives you information no internal dataset holds.

1. National Institute for Health and Care ExcellenceProfessional guidance
   Social, emotional and mental wellbeing in primary and secondary education (NG223) (2022)

   Recommends a whole-school approach in which a supportive climate and trusted relationships between pupils and staff are foundational rather than additional.

2. Public Health England / Department for EducationProfessional guidance
   Promoting children and young people's mental health and wellbeing: a whole-school and whole-college approach (2021)

   The eight-principle framework. Ethos and environment, and pupil voice, are two of the eight — belonging is treated as a structural property of the school, not a feeling to be encouraged.

3. Education Endowment FoundationResearch summary
   Improving Social and Emotional Learning in Primary Schools — guidance report (2019, updated 2021)

   Teaching relationship skills explicitly and reinforcing them across the school day. Rated moderate impact, very low cost, moderate evidence.

4. Education Endowment FoundationResearch summary
   Special Educational Needs in Mainstream Schools — guidance report (2020, updated 2021)

   Argues for building positive relationships and high-quality teaching as the first response, and warns against arrangements that separate pupils with SEND from their peers by default.

5. Education Endowment FoundationResearch summary
   Mentoring — Teaching and Learning Toolkit

   A useful corrective: relationship-based approaches are valuable but the measured academic impact of mentoring programmes is low. Belonging matters in its own right, not as an attainment lever.

6. Department for EducationProfessional guidance
   Preventing and tackling bullying (2017)

   Sets out schools' duties and the expectation that prevention rests on school ethos, not only on responding to incidents.

7. Department for EducationStatutory guidance
   Relationships education, relationships and sex education (RSE) and health education (2019)

   Relationships education is statutory in all primary schools in England — friendship, respect, boundaries and loneliness are curriculum content, not optional extras.

8. Department for EducationStatutory guidance
   SEND Code of Practice: 0 to 25 years (2015)

   Sets expectations for participation and inclusion, and for involving children and families in decisions about them.

9. Department for EducationStatutory guidance
   Working together to improve school attendance (2022, statutory from 2024)

   Places belonging and relationships explicitly within attendance work — children attend places where they feel known and safe.

10. Anna FreudProfessional guidance
    Resources for schools and colleges

    UK mental health charity material on relational practice, belonging and whole-school culture in primary settings.

11. Anna FreudProfessional guidance
    Mentally Healthy Schools

    Quality-assured primary-focused resources on friendship, connection and inclusion.