The 2015 Pixar movie Inside Out depicts Riley's emotions in a brightly lit control room where Joy is frantically pressing buttons, Sadness is hovering with uncertainty and is Anger ready to erupt. Just like in the movie, the Rileys in our schools today are navigating storms on the inside, yet we often expect them to learn as if everything is calm.
SEL refers to the development of five critical capacities: self-awareness (understanding one’s emotions and values), self-management (regulating emotions and behaviors), social awareness (empathy and understanding differences), relationship skills (communication, collaboration, conflict resolution), and responsible decision-making (ethical and caring choices).
These socio-emotional competencies (SECs) shape not only academic success, but also personality, well-being, relationships and future workplace readiness. As the landscape of the 21st-century rapidly shifts, today’s students face numerous pressures: intense academic competition, social comparison amplified by technology, reduced play, fragmented family structures, and rising anxiety levels. In this context, Social Emotional Learning (SEL) has emerged as a core competency for life.
What the Data is Telling Us
Schools with effective SEL programs report higher academic performance, reduced behavior problems, improved mental health, stronger relationships, and better long-term life outcomes.
The OECD Survey on Social and Emotional Skills 2023 reveals clear links between SEL and academic success. Students aged 10 and 15 with stronger skills in persistence, curiosity, assertiveness, empathy, and emotional regulation consistently achieve better results in reading, mathematics, and the arts and are less likely to skip school.
However, the survey also uncovers disparities, younger students report higher SEL skills than older students, girls report more anxiety and lower stress resistance than boys, particularly by age 15 while boys often report greater trust, energy, and sociability and students from disadvantaged backgrounds report lower levels of all social-emotional skills.
These gaps point to urgent questions: Who is not being seen? Who carries silent storms every day?
What Schools Must Do Next: Creating Systemic Change
Social Emotional Learning cannot remain a peripheral idea, it must become an intentional and measurable part of education. Schools need to begin by assessing SEL to identify disparities and track progress over time. Notably, global assessments such as PISA now include SEL indicators, reinforcing that what we measure, we value and what we value, we grow. At Excel One, we play an enabling role, supporting schools with assessment, frameworks, tools, and capacity-building that help make SEL measurable, actionable, and integrated into everyday learning.
Strong support is especially critical during transition years, such as the shift from primary to secondary school, when emotional needs sharply intensify. Schools must also offer targeted assistance for students with specific socio-emotional needs, while ensuring universal access to SEL for all learners. A key priority is helping students recognize their strengths and potential, particularly girls and students from disadvantaged backgrounds who tend to undervalue themselves.
It can help tackle real issues on campuses today including bullying, exclusion, aggression, and isolation. Creating a safe, trusting environment is itself a fundamental part of SEL. Schools must strengthen their emotional Wi-Fi, building communities where children feel seen, heard, protected, and valued. A school should be a nurturing nest, not just a place for instruction.
And importantly, SEL is not the responsibility of the teacher alone (even though they are integral levers). It requires a collective ecosystem, management, leadership, middle administrators, non-teaching staff, and parents, all playing an active role. When adults rediscover emotional skills, children learn them effortlessly.
Teachers at the Heart of SEL
Equally essential is empowering teachers, since they directly shape the climate of the classroom and model the behaviors students learn. If teachers are integral to SEL, we cannot take them for granted; we must invest in them. They need the right tools, data, and context to support each learner meaningfully. For example, how many teachers today have a dashboard that helps them understand each student’s socio-emotional profile, family context, access, or learning environment? Without such visibility, SEL becomes reactive and individual rather than proactive and systemic.
Teachers must also not be overburdened. Ensuring the emotional well-being of teachers is one of the strongest ways to strengthen SEL in students. When teachers feel supported, students thrive.
Across the world, systems are recognizing this central role. In India, for example, the NCERT guide Promoting Mental Health and Well-Being in School (aligned with NEP 2020) provides practical strategies to help teachers identify distress and create nurturing climates.
The Promise of SEL
In Born to Be Good, UC Berkeley professor Dacher Keltner argues that humans are wired for compassion and altruism. Positive emotions such as gratitude, love, and joy expand our ability to think, connect, and solve problems. Negative emotions narrow us, disconnecting us from others. SEL is not about suppressing negative emotions, but understanding them and choosing responses instead of reacting impulsively.
The promise of Social Emotional Learning is to create better learners and better humans for the rapidly shape shifting new world. And in a world hungry for empathy, connection, and courage, perhaps that is the most important education of all.
Are we teaching facts, or are we shaping humans?
Who is being seen and who is silently struggling?
We can’t keep asking students to learn algebra while they’re silently battling anxiety, loneliness, pressure, and comparison. Every classroom is full of storms we don’t see. And unless we put emotions at the center of education, we’ll continue to teach students who are present in body but absent in mind.
At Excel One, we’re working with schools to make Social Emotional Learning measurable, visible, and actionable by supporting educators with assessment, tools, and capacity-building so emotional learning becomes part of everyday learning, not an extra period on the timetable.
- December 16, 2025