What is belonging telling us?
Schools have always cared about whether pupils feel that they belong, even if they have not always used that word. What feels different now is the attention being paid to belonging as something we might deliberately understand and measure. That is happening at a time when attendance remains a serious concern, particularly in secondary schools, and when recent Department for Education research has found an association between pupils’ reported sense of belonging and attainment.
The DfE's new report, School Belonging Case Studies, feels particularly timely. Across 16 schools, belonging was bound up with safety, inclusion, relationships, being known as an individual and a shared sense of community. It was embedded in everyday culture and practice rather than delivered through a single initiative. The Pupil Engagement Framework was originally expected this summer but has now been delayed until the end of the 2026/27 academic year. That gives us useful space to think not only about how we measure belonging, but what we want to do with what we learn.
I have found it helpful to think about belonging in three related ways. First, it can be a condition that supports participation and learning: feeling safe, known and valued can make it easier for a pupil to engage with school. Second, belonging is an outcome worth valuing in its own right. We should want young people to leave education believing that they have something to contribute and that there is a place for them in the communities around them.
Third, belonging can also be a signal. A young person might feel deeply connected to their family, a sports club or a friendship group but not to school. That does not tell us why, but it gives us something worth understanding. For another child, feeling that they do not belong at school may be part of something wider: a sense that they do not really belong anywhere, or that there are very few places where they can feel accepted and valued. A school belonging measure cannot tell us which of these is true, but it can give us a reason to ask.
That is why I think we need to be careful about treating belonging as a score in isolation. #Beewell’s found differences in belonging between groups alongside strong associations with staff relationships, bullying and how pupils felt about their attainment. The DfE case studies similarly found schools drawing on surveys, pupil voice, attendance, well-being information and what they knew about individual pupils rather than relying on one measure.
The Children's Commissioner’s Childhood Lottery report provides a useful parallel. It is not about belonging, but it brings together more than 160 measures across areas including education, health, housing, safety and children's own experiences, helping to reveal patterns across different parts of children’s lives. The Children's Society's Good Childhood Report 2026 comes closer to the issue of belonging itself, looking across school, family, neighbourhood and wider relationships, and arguing for children’s wellbeing to be understood at local and national level as well as within individual schools. Both are useful reminders that one measure rarely tells the whole story.
The Government has set out two clear uses for belonging information. At school level, the Pupil Engagement Framework is intended to help leaders understand pupils’ experience and improve culture and practice. Nationally, pupil experience data is being used to track trends and inform policy. What feels less clear is what happens in between: how patterns across a trust, town or local area might be noticed, understood and acted on.
Imagine that several schools in the same area find that pupils with SEND consistently report a weaker sense of belonging. Each school might quite reasonably examine its own relationships, teaching, support and culture. National data might eventually show the same broad pattern but there is useful learning to be done locally before we get to that point. Are pupils experiencing similar difficulties with transitions? Is specialist support hard to access? Are families describing the same issues across schools? Is there something about local provision that each school can only see a small part of?
The point is not that the explanation must sit outside school. It is that seeing the pattern in more than one place gives us a reason to bring the information together and ask more questions. This does not require another reporting system, but it does require opportunities for schools and the organisations around them to compare what they are hearing, involve families and communities and work out whether they are looking at different parts of the same problem.
The DfE case studies make a useful point about pupil voice: asking pupils what they think matters most when they can see that their involvement influences what happens next. The same principle should apply to belonging. Collecting the information is only the beginning. Local areas need the time, skills and connections to follow patterns far enough to understand what is behind them, involve families and communities and work together when no one organisation can address the issue on its own. If we are going to get better at asking children whether they belong, we should make good use of what they tell us and make sure local areas are able to act on what they learn.
The IEC blog provides a platform for a range of voices and perspectives. The views expressed are those of the individual author and should not be taken as representing the official views of the Community.