The argument for investing in students’ social and emotional development has long been made on moral and educational grounds. This report makes it on economic ones — and the numbers are striking.
Commissioned by Learning Creates Australia, this economic modelling paper finds that improving the social and emotional skills of Australia’s 4.2 million school-aged children could generate at least $22 billion in long-term value through higher lifetime earnings, better employment outcomes, and improved mental health. For every dollar invested, the economy returns four. And the returns are largest for students from disadvantaged backgrounds — the very students most likely to miss out when schools treat social and emotional development as secondary to academic content.
The report is clear about what this means for how schools are designed. Social and emotional skills — self-management, emotional regulation, collaboration, resilience, responsible decision-making — are not separate from learning, they are the conditions under which learning happens. Without them, academic outcomes falter. With them, students not only perform better academically but are better equipped for the workforce, better positioned to maintain their health, and more likely to contribute to the communities around them.
For educators and policymakers asking whether the investment in wellbeing-centred, engagement-focused schooling is justified, this report provides a rigorous and affirmative answer. The $22 billion figure is, by the authors’ own account, deliberately conservative — it excludes reduced crime, lower welfare costs, civic participation and the broader social returns of a more capable generation. The full case is larger still.