Widening the High School Curriculum to Include Soft Skill Training: Impacts on Health, Behaviour, Emotional Wellbeing and Occupational Aspirations

Grace Lordan and Alistair McGuire (a.j.mcguire@lse.ac.uk)
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Alistair McGuire: London School of Economics

No 12439, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: From 2020 Personal, Social, Health and Economic Education will be compulsory in UK schools for adolescents, however less is known about how it can be taught in a an effective manner. We examine, through a randomised trial, the impact of an evidenced based health related quality of life (HRQoL) curriculum called Healthy Minds that ran in 34 high schools in England over a four-year period. We find robust evidence that Healthy Minds positively augments many physical health domains of treated adolescents. We also find some evidence that Healthy Minds positively affects behaviour, but has no impact on emotional wellbeing. We find notable gender effects, strongly favouring boys. We also present evidence that Healthy Minds changes career aspirations, with those exposed to treatment being less likely to choose competitive work and more likely to choose work that involves "people-skills". Overall our work illustrates the potential for later childhood interventions to promote HRQoL and develop the career aspirations of adolescents.

Keywords: soft skills; health related quality of life; character; high school curriculum; personal; social; health and economic education (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I18 I20 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 62 pages
Date: 2019-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-edu, nep-eur, nep-fle, nep-hap, nep-hea, nep-ltv and nep-ure
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

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Related works:
Working Paper: Widening the high school curriculum to include soft skill training: impacts on health, behaviour, emotional wellbeing and occupational aspirations (2019)
Working Paper: Widening the high school curriculum to include soft skill training: impacts on health, behaviour, emotional wellbeing and occupational aspirations (2019)
Working Paper: Widening the high school curriculum to include soft skill training: impacts on health, behaviour, emotional wellbeing and occupational aspirations (2019)
Working Paper: Widening the high school curriculum to include soft skill training: impacts on health, behaviour, emotional wellbeing and occupational aspirations (2019)
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