Study finds no extra benefit from well-known children’s mental health program

A new study from The University of Manchester has found that a well-known mental health intervention for children may be no more effective than the usual social and emotional learning (SEL) programs already being taught in primary schools.

The research, published in the Journal of Educational Psychology, was led by experts from the Manchester Institute of Education working alongside colleagues from the University of Dundee and Necmettin Erbakan University in Turkey. After looking at whether Passport: Skills for Life helped to improve children’s mental well-being, they found that it appeared to make little difference compared to what schools were already doing.

Passport is designed to help children aged 9 to 11 manage their emotions, cope with stress and build good relationships. It includes 18 weekly lessons covering topics like feelings, friendships and handling change.

Teachers who were trained in the program delivered these lessons in class—the idea was that by helping children to build strong emotional and social skills, it could prevent mental health problems like anxiety and depression.

The study involved more than 2,400 children from 62 primary schools across Greater Manchester and nearby areas. Some schools used the Passport program, while others continued with their usual teaching.

After closely studying the results, researchers found that the Passport lessons didn’t appear to lead to better outcomes for the children. There was no significant improvement in mental health symptoms, such as internalizing symptoms, or in other areas like emotional regulation, well-being or bullying. This means that children who took part in the program were no better off than those who followed the normal school curriculum.

The research team looked into several possible reasons for the lack of results. One idea was that the program wasn’t different enough from what schools were already doing—many schools in the study were already using other SEL programs. In fact, almost two-thirds of teachers said they used some kind of SEL teaching before the study even started, and about 60% of the Passport content overlapped with these existing lessons.

“Our research suggests that while Passport: Skills for Life is a well-designed program, it isn’t demonstrably superior to what many English primary schools are already effectively providing.

“The quality of universal SEL education has significantly improved over the last two decades, meaning new programs face a higher bar for showing additional impact. This highlights the excellent work already being done in schools to nurture children’s mental health,” said Professor Neil Humphrey.

The research also raises questions about whether programs developed in one country—like Passport, which was originally from Canada—will work the same way in another. Cultural differences may affect how well these interventions work.

The researchers plan to keep studying the data, and looking into whether the program has any long-term benefits, works better for certain groups of children or is good value for money.