Other
Approaches to understanding and measuring child well-being in schools in low-and middle-income countries in Asia Pacific: A scoping review
Emma Carter, Laura Ricketts, Aurora Lixinhao Gao, Therese Hopfenbeck, Lindsay G. Oades ·
Summary
Written by AI, not yet AICS's view · claude-haiku-4-5-20251001This scoping review examines how child well-being in schools is understood and measured across low- and middle-income countries in Asia-Pacific. The review notes that well-being extends beyond academic performance to include children's social, emotional, physical, cognitive and relational experiences at school. The document highlights that students in these regions face multiple challenges including poverty, conflict, and restrictive social norms that affect their well-being. The review emphasises that well-being is understood differently across cultures and education systems, yet school-based support programmes are often short-lived or poorly adapted to local contexts.
Key points
- Child well-being in schools includes social, emotional, physical, cognitive and relational experiences, not just academic performance
- Students in LMICs in Asia-Pacific face intersecting challenges including poverty, disrupted learning from conflict and environmental emergencies, and restrictive gendered or societal norms
- School-based well-being support is especially important where formal mental-health systems are limited
- Programmes often fail because they are short-lived or poorly adapted to local contexts and do not account for how children, families and educators uniquely understand well-being
- Well-being is understood and experienced differently across cultures and education systems in LMIC countries in Asia-Pacific
Limitations
This is a scoping review of approaches to measuring well-being rather than an evaluation of specific interventions or outcomes for children. The document does not report empirical findings on what actually improves child well-being in schools.
Abstract
Child wellbeing in schools can be broadly understood as the quality of children’s social, emotional, physical, cognitive and relational experiences within the school environment, extending beyond academic performance to whether children feel safe, supported, healthy and engaged (UNESCO, 2016). In many low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) in the Asia-Pacific, students face a number of intersecting challenges which include, but are by no means limited to, poverty, disrupted learning due to conflict and /or environmental emergencies, restrictive gendered or societal norms, all of which can detrimentally impact their wellbeing (Saran et al., 2019; Kennewell et al., 2022). In settings where formal mental-health systems are limited, the provision of school-based wellbeing support is especially important, however, competing priorities such as basic access to schooling and the acquisition of rudimentary literacy and numeracy, often mean that such initiatives are overlooked. Even in cases where wellbeing is attended to and programmes are implemented, often these efforts are short-lived or poorly adapted to local contexts, failing to regard how wellbeing is uniquely understood and experienced by children, their families and educators (Vostanis et al., 2021). Emerging research attests to the considerable variation in what ‘child wellbeing’ means across cultures and education systems in LMIC countries in Asia-Pacific (OECD, 2021; Muñoz-Chereau et al., 2021), underscoring the need for synthesising understanding on how the construct is differentially defined and measured within school environments as well as the research approaches which are enabling this.