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There is no “trade-off” between providing a supportive environment in schools and having high expectations for students when seeking to create a sense of belonging, researchers have found.

The sense of belonging is highest where teachers both support their students and challenge them to “think hard and learn more”, according to from the Nuffield Foundation, University College London and Lift Schools academy trust.

The research is part of a project investigating how schools can create a sense of belonging for pupils, in light of high student absence levels in the years after the Covid pandemic.

The absence rate in schools during the 2025-26 autumn term was 6.5 per cent, up from 4.9 per cent in 2019.

Former education secretary Bridget Phillipson that schools tackle absence by giving students a sense of belonging through the creation of “welcoming, engaging and inclusive spaces”.

Strong link between belonging and school climate

Ms Phillipson warned at the time that the “absence epidemic is the canary in the coal mine for belonging in our country”.

Researchers Sam Sims and Scott Oatley, both from UCL Institute of Education, and Bobbie Mills, head of research and analysis at Lift Schools, explored the relationship between school climate, student belonging and student absences.

They say that school climate is shaped by five different factors: “effective leaders”, “collaborative teachers”, “involved families”, “supportive environment” and “ambitious instruction”.

The researchers find a “strong relationship” between school climate and belonging, with belonging “falling off sharply” when climate is measured as being low.

Belonging has the strongest link with “supportive environment”. This was measured by students’ questionnaire responses to questions and statements such as “How safe do you feel in the corridors of the school?” and “My teachers treat me with respect”.

The second strongest relationship with belonging is “ambitious instruction” or high expectations for students. This was measured by responses to questionnaire statements such as “Learning a lot in this class” and “Consider different viewpoints”.

High standards ‘important’ for classroom belonging

Although “supportive environment” has a stronger link with school belonging than “ambitious instruction”, the latter is more important in the classroom, the researchers found.

“When we look at how much students feel they belong in their English or maths class (classroom belonging), ambitious instruction emerges as being almost as important as supportive environment,” the research says.

The researchers suggest that the findings should prompt an update to recommendations on how schools foster a sense of belonging.

“Creating a supportive environment matters a lot. But we should not be tempted to conclude that there is a trade-off between being supportive and having high expectations for students,” the research states.

“Instead our analysis suggests that the two go hand in hand. Belonging is highest where teachers both support their students and challenge them to think hard and learn more.”

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