A growing body of research shows that when students feel valued and recognised as members of their school community, their capacity to learn and to manage stress improves.
In September, a report commissioned by the International Baccalaureate and led by Monash University, examined student belonging through a synthesis of peer-reviewed studies, meta-analyses and systematic reviews across psychology and education.
The study examined how stronger belonging can promote wellbeing and flourishing, while students’ wellbeing and flourishing can also shape how belonging is experienced and sustained over time.
Finding that one in three students lack a sense of belonging, the authors called on schools to move past simply counting how many students feel lonely and start actively designing environments that build their belonging.
Nikki Bonus is Founder and CEO of Life Skills GO, an Australian-built whole-school platform that helps schools identify changes in student engagement, readiness to learn and broader patterns earlier.
Bonus said while one in three students lacking a sense of belonging should be a wake-up call, the bigger question is whether schools can see that disconnection developing early enough to act.
“Disengagement rarely happens overnight. It builds through small changes in a student’s emotional readiness, participation, behaviour or willingness to ask for help,” Bonus told The Educator. “The earlier we see those changes, the greater the opportunity to reconnect that student.”
Bonus said waiting until disengagement shows up in attendance or academic results means schools are “responding to the end of the story rather than the beginning”.
“Attendance is often where the system notices a problem. It is rarely where the problem starts,” she said. “Belonging isn’t a nice-to-have. It is one of the conditions that makes engagement, attendance and learning possible.”
Bonus said the pathway is clear: belonging drives engagement, engagement supports attendance, and attendance enables attainment.
“A student can be sitting in a classroom every day and already be disengaging. That is why attendance data alone will never tell us enough,” she said. “We need to stop treating student voice as an annual survey and start treating it as an early signal.”
Bonus said asking students regularly about their experience gives schools a chance to notice change while there is still time to respond.
“Student voice only has value if students can see that somebody is listening,” she said. “If we repeatedly ask young people how they are going and nothing happens with their answer, we risk eroding the very trust we are trying to build.”
Bonus said the goal isn’t to label a child as ‘not belonging’ but to understand what has changed around that child and what the adults and the school can change to help reconnect them.
“Twenty million check-ins don’t tell us everything about Australian students,” she said. “What they show us is the power of listening consistently.”
Bonus said while one response might reflect a bad day, a pattern over time can tell an educator that it is time to start a conversation.
“Good data should never reduce a child to a number. It should help the adults around that child see more of the picture, sooner,” she said.
“Technology should do the pattern-finding, not the relationship-building. Its job is to help educators see what they might otherwise miss, so they can do what technology cannot: listen, understand and respond.”