Recipient organisationUniversity of EssexSource-published name: University of Essex
Funding£279K
PeriodMar 2025 — Mar 2028
In plain English
AI plain-English summary
Starting school can derail a child’s mental health just as easily as it can launch it, and a child’s social bonds—with parents, peers, and teachers—may be the deciding factor. Most school-entry policies focus on cognitive skills like early literacy and numeracy, but there is no consensus on what “social well-being” actually means or how to measure it. This gap means that school-entry practices vary wildly across Europe, with no evidence-based guidance on supporting a child’s social and emotional development during this critical transition. The SWITCH project will change that by first identifying the core components of social well-being that predict a successful start to school. It will then uncover the biological and behavioural mechanisms—such as how a child synchronises with a parent or a peer—that link social well-being to later mental health and academic skills. If successful, the research will produce concrete, evidence-based guidelines for policymakers and educators on how to foster social well-being during school entry. This could reshape early-years education across Europe, shifting the focus from cognitive readiness alone to a more holistic approach that strengthens the social foundations children need to thrive.
View original technical description
As one of the earliest major transitions in childhood, school-entry poses ample opportunities and risks for well-being and mental health. A successful switch to school not only hinges on children's individual cognitive skills, but also their social well-being, involving bonds within families and social networks. Yet, a consensus on core facets of social well-being is notably absent. School-entry practices thus vary widely across Europe, calling for an empirically-based focus on socio-emotional development. To meet this pressing need, the SWITCH project will pursue the three following overarching research aims. Step 1: We will recruit five large-scale representative samples at preschool-age across four European countries (Germany, Sweden, UK, Austria; n=~1.000 per site) to establish the unique cross-contextual contribution of social well-being to successful school-entry over and above other well-being dimensions and mental health, while considering demographic and age-related effects and other variations in school-entry within and between participating countries. Step 2: In subsamples (n=80 per site), scoring high/low on social well-being in Step 1, we aim to disentangle biobehavioral mechanisms of social well-being in interplay with cognitive, early literacy and numeracy skills. Specifically, we will conduct in-depth lab appointments 6 months before and after school-entry, with fine-grained assessments of key relationships (parents, peers, teachers) and interpersonal biobehavioral synchrony (child-parent, child-peer), among others. We will prospectively examine the added value of social well-being (full sample) and its mechanisms (subsamples) for mental health, well-being, early literacy and numeracy skills at the end of 1st grade. Step 3: Based on our Step 1 and 2 results, we will develop and disseminate guidelines to policymakers and stakeholders detailing strategies for attending to and fostering (social) well-being amid this major transition in children’s lives.
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