Effective holistic approaches within education systems lead to improved academic, health, employment, societal and well-being outcomes across all countries. Such approaches also make for smart financial investments and have led consistently to improved long-term life outcomes.

These findings come from a new publication by Porticus, the LEGO Foundation and the Jacobs Foundation that argues that holistic child development is deeply intertwined with student academic outcomes.

The consistent finding from the literature—which includes the analysis of more than 360 sources—is that a holistic approach to education is a powerful driver of life success and an important buffer against adversities. Evidence behind these claims is robust, consistent and increasingly representative of diverse contexts, but how can we incorporate such findings into educational policy and practice?

A holistic approach aims to educate the whole child - physically, socially, emotionally and academically - with the active engagement and support of the community.¹

A holistic approach recognizes that all children, particularly those facing extreme adversity, require a range of knowledge, skills, experiences and core values that will enable them to engage as productive and ethical citizens, and reach their potential in life.

Despite this, embedding holistic practices within education systems remains the exception rather than the rule. This can be attributed, in part, to the misperception that a trade-off exists between supporting academic development versus the holistic development of children.

Education systems are complex with many competing interests and voices. However, 4 areas of critical concern have emerged in terms of the impact of supporting the holistic development of children: increasing academic achievement, supporting children to overcome adversity, mitigating wide-ranging societal consequences and realizing clear economic benefits.

4 focus areas for education stakeholders

• Increasing academic achievement: Across contexts, age ranges and subjects, a holistic approach to learning benefits and improves academic performance. Academic and holistic skills are intertwined and teachable in that strengths and weaknesses in one area can foster or hinder development in the other. We know that education systems can transform in ways that are equally attentive to students’ academic and holistic development, and that this does not compromise academic rigor, but strengthens it.³
  • Ethiopia presents a strong model through their Speed Schools that provide access to learning for out-of-school children aged 9 to 14. The approach delivers 3 years of primary school curriculum in just 10 months to bridge back to education levels at 4^th grade. A 2018 impact study found that of all former Speed School students tracked, approximately 75% were still in school compared to 61%-66% of students who did not attend. Speed School graduates also scored statistically higher than their government school counterparts.⁴ Researchers found that because Speed School students had become accustomed to active involvement in lessons, they were more confident to participate in lessons and actively learn even within the less interactive environments of government schools.
• Overcoming adversity: The type of stress a child experiences when exposed to conflict or trauma becomes toxic if there is intense, repeated and extended activation of the body’s stress-response system, particularly if there is no supportive adult figure to offer protection.⁵ The antidote has been shown to be a holistic approach to education that cultivates skills critical to mitigating the negative impact of such trauma, and has the potential to foster inclusivity at school by removing institutional barriers for marginalized learners.⁶
  • The Norwegian Refugee Council’s Better Learning Programme (BLP) is one such promising example; the model that has been effective in improving the well-being and learning of displaced children at scale. It can be effectively contextualized and implemented by a trained teacher or counsellor, making it ideal for emergency and under-resourced humanitarian settings. The BLP has been implemented in several countries, including Palestine, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, and Niger.⁷
• Societal consequences: Outcomes related to well-being, health, criminal behavior and addiction have been shown to be impacted by key holistic skills. Specifically, these skills can support overcoming the impact of a toxic stress response that can lead to immediate and long-term negative consequences such as poor physical and mental health, behavior issues as well as unhealthy relationships, all of which have wider impacts beyond childhood. Holistic skills also stimulate positive relationships within the classroom and home environment.
  • In the 1970s, Escuela Nueva was developed as an education model for rural primary schoolchildren in Colombia. Leveraging a holistic approach by cultivating a child-centred learning model, it is characterized by placing the teacher as a facilitator rather than a lecturer, flexible calendars, relevant curricula based on life skills and closer school-community relationships to increase retention of students who face adversity. This model has been shown to improve literacy and numeracy while also advancing holistic skill development including active learning, self-esteem, creativity and civic values.⁸
• Economic benefits: Investing in childhood holistic skills can lead to positive development that continues across the lifespan, which in turn can have an economic benefit. Social costs, employability, productivity, active citizenship, income levels as well as reduced health and criminal justice costs can be positively impacted by the development of key holistic skills in children, which will compound their benefit when they become adults.

Beyond dichotomies in child development

The presumption that children, parents, teachers and education systems must prioritize one set of skills over another is both misleading and encourages misunderstanding of the science of learning itself. The evidence shows that it can be done and is being done.

If education systems can strengthen a child’s mindset, family circumstances, trauma, adversity and social context do not have to define a child’s future. We also know from crisis-affected settings that programs that support children and adolescents through school-based social-emotional learning have a high benefit-to-cost ratio.¹⁰

Despite the scope and scale of the literature available, important gaps remain in both what we know about holistic learning and its impacts. More evidence is needed to characterize the impact during adolescence and in low-income country contexts, but the rise in recent research efforts is promising.

A holistic approach to learning is not a magic bullet. It is complex and takes both prioritization and commitment from all levels of an education system to fully work. But the evidence is clear: when effectively applied, holistic learning can benefit society in extraordinary ways.

This article is based on the Porticus, The Lego Foundation, The Jacobs Foundation: Challenging the False Dichotomy: An Evidence Synthesis (2023). Retrieved from https://www.porticus.com/en/articles/article-placeholder-i3596-education-systems-should-strive-for-the-holistic-development-of-students. and all references and citations for the above can be found there.

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