Passport to Success
Support that creates security, resilience, and hope
What do children need to navigate emotions, friendships, and everyday challenges?
This project explores a school-based programme designed to strengthen children’s life skills. The aim is to equip them with better tools to manage their emotions, build healthy relationships, and cope more confidently with difficulties.
The programme is being tested with around 2,000 primary school pupils. Researchers are examining whether it can reduce loneliness and bullying, and help prevent issues such as anxiety and low mood.
They are also looking at who benefits most from the programme, and whether the effects last over time.
The project seeks to understand how schools can better support children’s mental health – in ways that truly work in practice.
Awarded grants
9 600 000
NOKRecipient
University of Manchester
Project
Passport to Success
Project period
2021
2025
Awarded grants
9 600 000
NOKPre-registration
Publications
Trial protocol
Passport to Success: can teaching children social and emotional skills improve their mental health?
Examining the impact of a universal social and emotional learning intervention (Passport) on internalising symptoms and other outcomes among children, compared to the usual school curriculum: study protocol for a school-based cluster randomised trial
PhD students publications
Exploring how children and adolescents talk about coping strategies relating to loneliness using reflexive thematic analysis: a qualitative study
A systematic review informing recommendations for assessing implementation variability in universal, school-based social and emotional learning interventions
Results
Executive Summary
This project conducted the first independent randomised controlled trial (RCT) of Passport: Skills for Life — a universal social-emotional learning programme for children aged 9–11, designed for use in English primary schools.
62 schools in Greater Manchester and surrounding areas participated. Over 2,400 children are included in the study. Half the schools delivered the Passport programme; the rest continued as normal. Children were assessed at three time points: at the start, at the end, and twelve months after completion.
Key finding:
Passport had no statistically significant effect on internalising symptoms (anxiety, depression) or any of the secondary outcome measures, at either post-intervention or one year later.
The economic analysis found that the programme was not cost-effective. The qualitative process evaluation revealed that teachers valued the comic book format and the opportunities for emotional reflection, but that the programme created challenges around differentiation and inclusion of pupils with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND).
Despite null findings on effectiveness, the study delivers substantial new knowledge: methodological, about implementation processes, and about the conditions for cost-effectiveness. The findings have been published in open-access, peer-reviewed journals, shared with schools, and used in dialogue with policy makers.
