NADIA SIDDIQUI AND STEPHEN GORARD, EVIDENCE CENTRE FOR EDUCATION, DURHAM UNIVERSITY, UK
In many low- and middle-income countries, academic success at school is widely understood as the primary route to social mobility, economic security and national development. Policymakers and families alike invest heavily in education, with the expectation that more schooling will lead to improved learning, higher test scores and improved life chances. This idea also underpins much international development policy, where expanding access to schooling is treated as both an economic and a moral imperative. Our interest in this topic emerged from earlier research in South Asia that examined the effects of schooling on children’s learning and development. However, this article shifts the focus to England, where we explore socio-emotional development as a key outcome of schooling and examine the emotional labour undertaken by teachers to support it. Emotional labour is not an ancillary aspect of teaching but a vital precondition for pupils’ learning and development, making teachers’ emotional capacity a matter of central educational importance.
Much of our research has been grounded in the assumption that attending school contributes to the development of foundational literacy and numeracy skills. In a recent natural experiment examining the effects of early primary schooling in India and Pakistan (Siddiqui et al., 2025), we sought to identify the causal impact of schooling on the learning and development of children aged four to eight years. However, the findings prompted a broader question about what schools contribute beyond academic learning, leading us to consider the role of socio-emotional development and the teachers who support it in the English context. Using age-based eligibility rules for school entry, we expected to observe the clearest effects on literacy and numeracy, particularly given the strong focus on formal instruction in early grades.
Instead, the most robust effects emerged elsewhere. While attending school in the early years did influence foundational literacy and numeracy, the strongest and most consistent impacts were observed in children’s socio-emotional development. Schooling was associated with improvements in emotional regulation, social confidence, communication and prosocial behaviour. Children who had attended school were better able to manage interactions with peers, follow routines and respond to social expectations, even when measurable gains in academic attainment were modest.
These findings initially challenged our expectations, but they align with a broader understanding of what early schooling actually provides. School is one of the first public institutions that children encounter beyond the family. It can offer structure, predictability, relationships with non-familial adults and daily opportunities to practise self-regulation and communication (Siddiqui and Gorard, 2024). These foundational skills underpin later learning, but they are rarely foregrounded in accountability systems or attainment metrics.
Reflecting on these findings in the current English context feels particularly timely. Public debate in England continues to prioritise academic standards, examination outcomes and curriculum coverage (Siddiqui et al., 2019). Yet many of the most visible pressures on schools today are not primarily academic. Rising levels of elective home education, persistent attendance problems post-COVID, increasing behaviour incidents and high rates of teacher attrition suggest that the challenges facing schools are deeply social and emotional in nature (Siddiqui et al., 2026).
Post-pandemic schooling has further exposed these dimensions. Teachers report heightened behavioural difficulties, increased anxiety among pupils and a growing need for emotional support within classrooms. At the same time, schools operate within policy frameworks that continue to reward measurable attainment above all else. This creates a disconnect between what schools are required – and are able – to do on the ground and what is formally recognised as success.
The implications of this mismatch extend beyond pupils to teachers themselves. Teaching is not simply a technical activity of content delivery; it can be relational, emotional and socially embedded work (Saks et al., 2022). Yet teachers’ professional roles are increasingly narrowed by accountability pressures that leave little space for recognising this broader remit (Tereshchenko et al., 2025). When the emotional and relational demands of teaching are treated as incidental rather than integral, the risks of burnout and disengagement intensify (Badger et al., 2026).
Our recent study of 53 interviews with teachers, school leaders and support staff in five English schools with high retention sheds further light on this issue. These schools were located in highly disadvantaged contexts and yet had managed to sustain relatively stable and diverse staff teams. What stood out in the interviews was not a focus on performance data or inspection outcomes, but the centrality of relationships, trust and professional identity in keeping teachers in the profession.
Teachers spoke at length about the emotional dimensions of their work: supporting pupils facing poverty, instability or trauma; managing behaviour rooted in unmet needs; and acting as consistent adults in young people’s lives. Many expressed pride in serving their communities and saw their role as extending well beyond academic instruction. However, they also described the emotional toll of this work and a sense that it was insufficiently valued within policy frameworks that prioritise attainment above all else.
Gendered dynamics also emerged strongly in discussions of career progression. Female teachers frequently described navigating promotion pathways alongside pregnancy, maternity leave, childcare responsibilities and caring roles. Many reported returning from career breaks to find progression more difficult, with flexibility often coming at the cost of advancement. Teachers from ethnic minority backgrounds, particularly those without extended family networks in England, described additional pressures that further constrained career mobility.
These experiences have significant implications for workforce sustainability. When professional norms assume uninterrupted careers and constant availability, they disproportionately disadvantage women and those with caring responsibilities. Over time, this can shape who remains in the profession, who progresses into leadership and whose voices influence school culture. Most importantly, it also affects the capacity of schools to provide the stable, emotionally attuned environments that support children’s socio-emotional development.
Cultural perceptions of teaching also helped to shape teachers’ experiences and career trajectories. Some participants, particularly from South Asian backgrounds, described teaching as a practical or supportive occupation rather than a long-term professional pathway. Teaching was valued for its relative stability and compatibility with family life but was not always seen as a career warranting progression into senior leadership. In some cases, and perhaps ironically, teachers described leaving the profession once family financial pressures eased or children became independent.
Such narratives matter because they influence patterns of retention and progression across the system. When teaching is framed as temporary or supplementary work, the profession struggles to retain experienced practitioners and diversify leadership pipelines (Gorard et al., 2025). This, in turn, affects the capacity of schools to function as stable institutions capable of supporting both academic learning and socio-emotional development over time.
Across all interviews, school culture emerged as a decisive factor in shaping teachers’ wellbeing and commitment. Inclusive leadership, transparent decision making and everyday practices of respect fostered trust and belonging. Conversely, informal hierarchies, cliques and opaque promotion processes undermined morale and contributed to attrition. Teachers noted that seemingly small practices – such as acknowledging religious festivals or accommodating caring responsibilities without stigma – had a disproportionate impact on how valued they felt.
Conclusion
These findings reinforce a critical insight from the earlier natural experiment evidence:
socio-emotional development does not occur in isolation. For children to develop emotional regulation and social confidence, they require stable relationships with adults who themselves are supported, respected and emotionally resourced (Glazzard and Rose, 2020). A workforce under strain cannot sustainably provide this foundation. Schools need to exemplify the characteristics that they want to encourage in pupils.
This evidence points to the need for a reframing of educational priorities. Academic attainment remains important, but it is an incomplete measure of what schools do and what society needs them to do. Early schooling, in particular, plays a vital role in building social and emotional foundations that shape children’s engagement with learning over the long term.
Policy frameworks must therefore recognise teaching as a socio-emotional profession, and not simply a delivery mechanism for curriculum content. Strengthening teachers’ professional identity, autonomy and wellbeing is not a peripheral concern; it is central to the functioning of schools as social institutions. Retention strategies that focus narrowly on recruitment or incentives are unlikely to succeed if they do not address fairness, flexibility and trust in everyday working conditions. Supporting pupils’ socio-emotional development requires school cultures that value teachers’ wellbeing, support and professional knowledge and judgement. When schools are places in which both staff and pupils can flourish, teachers are better able to undertake the relational work that underpins learning and development (Noddings, 2006).
Finally, we need to reconsider how we judge educational success. When accountability systems privilege what is easiest to measure rather than what matters most, they risk eroding the very conditions that sustain learning. The lessons from South Asia and from English classrooms converge on a simple but powerful point: schooling works not only because of what is taught, but because of the relationships and emotional capacities that it helps to build. Recentring these dimensions may be essential to addressing the social and professional challenges now facing education in England.
