This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: By age 15, an Australian student may have spent as many as 11,000 hours at school. Many formative social and emotional experiences occur at school.
Because of this, there is increasing interest in which elements of this environment have the greatest impact on students' mental health and well-being. School connectedness—the degree to which students feel they belong and are connected to others in the school community—has received growing attention from educators and researchers. School connectedness includes relationships with other students, teachers and school staff, including sports coaches, counselors and front office staff.
Higher school connectedness has been linked to several important school outcomes, including higher academic achievement and fewer aggressive behaviors, such as bullying. But as our new study shows, there is mounting evidence that school connectedness may also play a key role in supporting students' well-being. In a new study at the Black Dog Institute, we examined a range of school factors to understand which were most important for student mental health and well-being.
The factors we examined included school location, school type (private or public), whether schools were boys-only, girls-only or coed, teacher-student ratios, school income, attendance, students' cultural and linguistic diversity, staff perceptions of their schools' cultures, and students' ratings of school connectedness and school climate. School staff were asked to respond to statements about their school's culture, such as "People at this school operate as a real team." Students were asked to rate how much they agreed with statements such as "Teachers try hard to help us," "We feel safe in school," "I feel like I belong at school" and "I make friends easily at school." We drew on data from more than 1,500 eighth-grade students across 35 different types of high schools in New South Wales. We used student and staff self-reported data as well as sociodemographic and school administrative data.
Students' mental health was also assessed through standard psychological questionnaires. Of all the factors we examined, only students' sense of school connectedness in eighth grade was linked to higher well-being two years later, when students were in 10th grade. This means students who had high scores for school connectedness in eighth grade were more likely to have higher mental well-being in 10th grade, even when we accounted for other factors such as gender and a history of mental health issues.
This finding highlights the role supportive, engaging relationships at school can play in students' psychological well-being. Our study found no link between student mental health and other school factors such as student-teacher ratios, whether a school was boys-only, girls-only or coed, or whether it was public or private. These factors have been linked to other important student outcomes such as academic achievement.
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