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Welcome to the SEAL community!

Social and emotional learning helps children and young people to:

‘… learn how to communicate their feelings, set themselves goals and work towards them, interact successfully with others, resolve conflicts peaceably, control their anger and negotiate their way through the many complex relationships in their lives today and tomorrow’.

This kind of learning underpins positive behaviour and attitudes to learning, personal development and mental health and wellbeing. It is at the heart of PSHE, relationships and health education.

Research shows it also helps raise attainment. Social and emotional learning is attracting increasing attention in schools. On this website you will find age-related teaching resources and whole school frameworks to support your work.

Many of them come from the national ‘Social and emotional Learning’ (SEAL) initiative. By registering with us (which is free, quick and easy), you can immediately find and download all of the national SEAL curriculum materials and teacher guidance. There’s a progression in learning objectives that can be used in any school, and training materials if you want to introduce or refresh a whole-school SEAL approach. Click on National Resources  then click the Getting Started with SEAL tab.

If you would like regularly updated teaching resources, you can also join our SEAL Community. Set up and supported by leading experts in the field, the SEAL Community is a not-for-profit organisation which aims to promote and develop SEAL through sharing news, practice, resources and expertise. Joining costs £30 for individuals, £75 for schools/settings and £100 for local authorities or other multi-school organisations. Click here to join

Get started with SEAL

Register or join the SEAL Community here

Whats new

News update

World Economic Forum report says the jobs of the future need empathy

The World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs Report 2025 brings together the perspective of over 1,000 leading global employers—collectively representing more than 14 million workers across 22 industry clusters and 55 economies from around the world. It identifies critical skills for the workforce of tomorrow.

New reports on whole-school approaches to wellbeing published in Wales and England

Two new reports on whole school approaches to emotional and mental wellbeing highlight gaps where more evidence is required and key challenges facing schools.

Revised relationships, sex and health education guidance in England has a new focus on self-regulation

In new proposals for changes to the RSHE curriculum, information has been added on building resilience, coping and emotional regulation: ‘schools should support pupils to develop strategies for self-regulation, perseverance and determination, even in the face of setbacks.’

AI takes the emotional intelligence test

How does AI do on an emotional intelligence test? Not that well is the answer. The organisation Six Seconds measured ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini on an Emotional Intelligence assessment — the SEI.

More mental health support teams

Mental health support teams will be expanded in England to cover almost a million more pupils by next year, the DfE have announced. £49 million will be invested to ensure that six in 10 pupils will have access to a mental health support team by March 2026.

Sharing practice

Building a mentally strong school at Thornbury Primary

Thornbury Primary have thought long and hard about how to make sure every child can talk to an adult if they need to.
Most children are happy to share their thoughts and feelings openly, but all classrooms have worry boxes ...

Family SEAL at transition to secondary school

Four secondary schools in Torfaen in Wales developed a great project some years ago to ease transition to secondary school for students identified as at potential risk of exclusion. Two of the schools recorded no Y7 exclusions for the year following the project, and the rest showed reduced exclusions in Y7 when compared to the previous three years.

Family SEAL for transition in the primary school

Each year, staff at Exminster Primary ran a series of five weekly Family SEAL sessions for new Reception class parents. The format was an adult session immediately followed by time for adults and children to undertake activities together.

Teaching self-regulation through transactional analysis at Matthew Moss High

Watch this amazing film case study about how Matthew Moss High School have reshaped relationships and helped students (and adults) regulate their emotions and behaviour – by teaching staff and students about transactional analysis.

What does a classroom built around social emotional learning really look like?

At Parkway Elementary School it looks like this..

Resource roundup

Good reads for Relationships and Changes

Good picture book reads for Relationships and Changes themes ...

Brilliant ME!

Cornwall’s Headstart Kernow have created a very useful resource for primary schools called Brilliant ME! , to support social and emotional learning in KS2 ...

Decider Skills

We’ve come across schools subscribing to an interesting programme called Decider Skills for their 1-1 and small group work ...

Free lesson plans from PSHE Association

Tackle the rise in AI 'nudification' on social media

The big new assembly resource

This month we launch a series of assemblies for primary SEAL, beginning with assemblies for the Going for Goals and Good to be Me Themes ...

Practical tools

Got a student who had a difficult time – and gave others a difficult time - in school last year?

Pooky Knightsmith has some great advice  on how to reset and rebuild relationships and engagement at the start of the new school year ...

Share this with your Reception colleagues

Does every early years teacher know what works best in helping children learn to behave well? Share this excellent article with them.

It’s not just a fight-or-flight response

We really liked this more complex model of human responses to perceived threat. One to share with colleagues to help them understand pupils’ behaviour, perhaps – or with children, to help them understand and regulate their own responses to stress.

Back to school – use a survey that fits on an index card to build relationships and belonging

Get to know the children you teach by asking them to answer five questions that fit on an index card.....

Are you using the size of the problem?

This strategy helps children decide whether a problem they face is large or small, so they can adjust their response accordingly. Watch a video about it here. There’s a printable size of the problem worksheet, too.

New research

SEL and disadvantage

New study finds that large disadvantage gaps in social and emotional skillls in early childhood persist through school, and that children with similar initial skills diverge over time according to family background ...

Slow breathing really works

Showing children an animated guide to slow breathing in naturalistic settings, such as playgrounds and museums, led to significant reductions in their biomarkers of stress (heart rate and respiratory sinus arrhythmia)...

Longer playtimes reduce stress

10 yr olds given 45 mins daily 'recess' outdoors (rather than 30 mins) at school had 65% less cortisol in hair strands ...

Which social and emotional skills are most teachable?

This OECD report addresses the questions of whether social and emotional skills (SES)  are generally teachable and how SES compare to each other in terms of teachability.

Grow social and emotional skills – and improve academic attainment and attendance

This study used data on SEL in 10 to 14 year olds in California to explore whether changes in individual students’ reports of their social-emotional skills from one school year to the next predict changes in attainment and behaviour.

Top resource

The Friendship Bench

The Friendship Bench by Wendy Meddour is a great book to use if you have or are planning to create f

My Life on Fire

My Life on Fire by Cath How is a great book to use in upper KS2 to discuss and develop empathy.

Which sheep are you today?

We loved these sheep memes, to use in emotion check-ins ...

We've Got This! Six steps to build your empathy superpower

We love this new book for children from EmpathyLab. Written by Rashmi Sirdeshpande, with stunning illustrations from Juliana Eigner, it gives young people concrete, fun, accessible ways to practice and build their empathy skills.

Really useful (we hope)

We’ve created three new resources, to support work on self-awareness/self-regulation - A progression in vocabulary for describing emotions – words to teach from EYFS through to Year 7 - Twenty simple exercises to help children stay calm – a collection of breathing and relaxation exercises, with instructions and video links - Top emotion check-ins – thirteen different ways for children to show how they are feeling at points during the day