Teenagers in England typically have ‘worse socio-emotional skills'
Teenagers in England typically have worse socio-emotional skills than their peers in other countries, a report has suggested.
The socio-emotional skills of pupils aged 15-16 in England are significantly weaker than many of their peers in comparator countries, according to the National Foundation for Educational Research (NFER).
If left unaddressed, these weaknesses could have consequences for young people's future employability, the researchers have warned.
The NFER study examines the socio-emotional skills of young people in England – based on scores of assertiveness, co-operation, curiosity, emotional control, empathy, persistence and stress resistance – compared to those of other countries that were part of a major international study.
The 2022 Programme for International Student Assessment (Pisa), which is an Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) study, measured the socio-emotional skills of 15-year-olds in 31 countries.
The NFER research, funded by the Nuffield Foundation, said: 'Young people in England typically have worse socio-emotional skills at the end of lower secondary school (age 15/16) than the OECD average, and inequalities in these skills are also greater in England than any other country in our data.'
Researchers found that England ranks in the bottom ten countries of the countries that measured socio-emotional skills in the OECD study.
The working paper added: 'Inequalities in children's socio-emotional skills are also higher in England than any other country in our data, which appears to be driven by large inequalities in children's emotional control, stress resistance, assertiveness and perseverance.'
Researchers have suggested that the relatively poor socio-emotional skills of 15-16 year olds in England could be an indication that young people have lower Essential Employment Skills (EES) when they leave education than their peers across the OECD.
The report also found that 15-16-year-olds in the UK typically have better maths, reading and science skills compared to their peers across OECD countries.
But inequalities in these skills are 'marginally greater' in the UK and they have not narrowed over the past decade, it added.
The study has called on the Government to explore what more it could do to incentivise schools to promote the development of children's socio-emotional skills – like communication and collaboration.
It also called on the government to create a clear Early Years workforce strategy as it highlighted the importance of high-quality Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) for children's skill development.
Jude Hillary, the programme's principal investigator and NFER's co-head of UK policy and practice, said: 'Socio-emotional skills are very important for young people's employment prospects as well as their life satisfaction and general wellbeing.
'This research suggests we need to do more, earlier in children's lives to support their social and emotional development and give them the best possible start.
'If we fail to prioritise these skills, we are potentially not just limiting individual wellbeing and potential – we are weakening the future workforce and economy of the UK.'
The NFER report also called on the Government to consider introducing targeted funding for disadvantaged pupils in 16-19 education.
Pepe Di'Iasio, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders (ASCL), said: 'Socio-emotional skills are important not just in the workplace but for forming strong and successful relationships in all areas of life, and the inequalities identified in this report are concerning.
'We agree that more needs to be done to support the social and emotional development of all children from a young age.
'Improving access to early years education is key to closing the disadvantage gap, and this will require an uplift in funding and staffing levels.'
He added: 'We have long called for reform of the pupil premium to provide funding for disadvantaged 16 to 19 year-olds which matches that for younger pupils.
'Educational inequalities do not disappear at this age, and this should be reflected in funding levels to ensure schools and colleges are able to support all students as they prepare to enter the workplace or engage in further study.'
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4 days ago
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Michael Gerlich at SBS Swiss Business School in Kloten, Switzerland, tested 666 people in the UK and found a significant correlation between frequent AI use and lower critical-thinking skills – with younger participants who showed higher dependence on AI tools scoring lower in critical thinking compared with older adults. Similarly, a study by researchers at Microsoft and Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania surveyed 319 people in professions that use GenAI at least once a week. While it improved their efficiency, it also inhibited critical thinking and fostered long-term overreliance on the technology, which the researchers predict could result in a diminished ability to solve problems without AI support. 'It's great to have all this information at my fingertips,' said one participant in Gerlich's study, 'but I sometimes worry that I'm not really learning or retaining anything. I rely so much on AI that I don't think I'd know how to solve certain problems without it.' Indeed, other studies have suggested that the use of AI systems for memory-related tasks may lead to a decline in an individual's own memory capacity. This erosion of critical thinking is compounded by the AI-driven algorithms that dictate what we see on social media. 'The impact of social media on critical thinking is enormous,' says Gerlich. 'To get your video seen, you have four seconds to capture someone's attention.' The result? A flood of bite-size messages that are easily digested but don't encourage critical thinking. 'It gives you information that you don't have to process any further,' says Gerlich. By being served information rather than acquiring that knowledge through cognitive effort, the ability to critically analyse the meaning, impact, ethics and accuracy of what you have learned is easily neglected in the wake of what appears to be a quick and perfect answer. 'To be critical of AI is difficult – you have to be disciplined. It is very challenging not to offload your critical thinking to these machines,' says Gerlich. Wendy Johnson, who studies intelligence at Edinburgh University, sees this in her students every day. She emphasises that it is not something she has tested empirically but believes that students are too ready to substitute independent thinking with letting the internet tell them what to do and believe. Without critical thinking, it is difficult to ensure that we consume AI-generated content wisely. It may appear credible, particularly as you become more dependent on it, but don't be fooled. A 2023 study in Science Advances showed that, compared with humans, GPT-3 chat not only produces information that is easier to understand but also more compelling disinformation. Why does that matter? 'Think of a hypothetical billionaire,' says Gerlich. 'They create their own AI and they use that to influence people because they can train it in a specific way to emphasise certain politics or certain opinions. If there is trust and dependency on it, the question arises of how much it is influencing our thoughts and actions.' AI's effect on creativity is equally disconcerting. Studies show that AI tends to help individuals produce more creative ideas than they can generate alone. However, across the whole population, AI-concocted ideas are less diverse, which ultimately means fewer 'Eureka!' moments. Sternberg captures these concerns in a recent essay in the Journal of Intelligence: 'Generative AI is replicative. It can recombine and re-sort ideas, but it is not clear that it will generate the kinds of paradigm-breaking ideas the world needs to solve the serious problems that confront it, such as global climate change, pollution, violence, increasing income disparities, and creeping autocracy.' To ensure that you maintain your ability to think creatively, you might want to consider how you engage with AI – actively or passively. Research by Marko Müller from the University of Ulm in Germany shows a link between social media use and higher creativity in younger people but not in older generations. Digging into the data, he suggests this may be to do with the difference in how people who were born in the era of social media use it compared with those who came to it later in life. Younger people seem to benefit creatively from idea-sharing and collaboration, says Müller, perhaps because they're more open with what they share online compared with older users, who tend to consume it more passively. Alongside what happens while you use AI, you might spare a thought to what happens after you use it. Cognitive neuroscientist John Kounios from Drexel University in Philadelphia explains that, just like anything else that is pleasurable, our brain gets a buzz from having a sudden moment of insight, fuelled by activity in our neural reward systems. These mental rewards help us remember our world-changing ideas and also modify our immediate behaviour, making us less risk averse – this is all thought to drive further learning, creativity and opportunities. But insights generated from AI don't seem to have such a powerful effect in the brain. 'The reward system is an extremely important part of brain development, and we just don't know what the effect of using these technologies will have downstream,' says Kounios. 'Nobody's tested that yet.' There are other long-term implications to consider. Researchers have only recently discovered that learning a second language, for instance, helps delay the onset of dementia for around four years, yet in many countries, fewer students are applying for language courses. Giving up a second language in favour of AI-powered instant-translation apps might be the reason, but none of these can – so far – claim to protect your future brain health. As Sternberg warns, we need to stop asking what AI can do for us and start asking what it is doing to us. Until we know for sure, the answer, according to Gerlich, is to 'train humans to be more human again – using critical thinking, intuition – the things that computers can't yet do and where we can add real value.' We can't expect the big tech companies to help us do this, he says. No developer wants to be told their program works too well; makes it too easy for a person to find an answer. 'So it needs to start in schools,' says Gerlich. 'AI is here to stay. We have to interact with it, so we need to learn how to do that in the right way.' If we don't, we won't just make ourselves redundant, but our cognitive abilities too.
