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School connectedness is critical to primary school students’ health, wellbeing and academic outcomes. It is the cohesiveness between diverse groups in the school community, including students, school staff, families and allied health professionals (Rowe & Stewart, 2011). At a time when there are for children’s declining mental health and physical wellbeing, the question of what schools can actively do has never been more urgent. This study responds to the call by inviting primary school students into the discussion to deepen understanding of the factors that positively or negatively influence their experiences. The research included students in year 3 to year 6 (typically 8-to-12-year-olds) across five independent, non-government schools in New South Wales, Australia. In this blog post I ask what makes primary/elementary school children feel connected to school and what whole-school communities and governments can do to strengthen their experiences.

Children’s perspectives

‘When feeling connected to school the children had fun, felt happy, grateful and like “you’re all in it together”.’

The factors most influential to children’s school connectedness were the breadth of opportunities on offer, the extent of community collaboration and the commitment to supportive school systems. At the heart, was students’ and schools’ ‘being and doing’, and strong social and reciprocal relationships with peers and teachers. Students’ sense of connectedness was a bidirectional process, where connection was not exclusively about being accepted, respected and included as previously thought; rather, it was about how they value and ‘cherish’ their experiences. When feeling connected to school the children had fun, felt happy, grateful and like ‘you’re all in it together’ (Hoenig & Cumming, 2026). Connectedness was not achieved by programmes or interventions, that were reactive, juvenile or had a singular focus. It was supported by a multilayered approach involving friends, ‘buddies’, school staff (teaching and non-teaching) and even ‘special people who come to the school like you [the researcher]’. This is exemplified by McKenzie, who chose their own pseudonym:

Every day you come to school you are part of a community, it could be the friends you’re sitting with at lunch, it could be your class, it could be just a group, it could be a special celebration that day, it’s just every day in [school] you enter different communities and you meet new people and I think that’s the best thing about school.

Whole-school communities make a difference to shaping children’s experience of school. Peers, teachers (classroom and specialist) and parents are supportive, encouraging, fair and offer safety. They share the children’s interests, goals and aspirations.

Implications for school-led practice

The implications are clear: schools are in a prime position to increase children’s connectedness and minimise the negative influences upon their success and overall wellbeing. Where feasible, school communities can provide a range of activities in the school setting, including extracurricular (sports, music, camps, clubs) and curricular activities (groupwork, peer-mentoring lessons), special events (concerts, celebrations, fundraisers) and opportunities for representation of the school (competitions, house captains). They can hold events at special times after hours and on weekends when parents/carers can attend. As McKenzie described, schools can schedule routine and special events to create a climate of community engagement and collaboration. The challenge is lessening the focus on national assessment programmes, academic achievement, teacher performativity and school compliance.

A shared responsibility

School connectedness ebbs and flows, giving schools a precious opportunity to improve conditions in their immediate and surrounding environments. It must, therefore, be continuously nurtured and monitored by the broad group of people in the school community, including students themselves. For genuine progress to occur, a context-specific, whole-school approach is essential and will necessarily vary across school settings, school sectors and countries. This is because, according to the research participants, schools’ philosophies, policies, practices and programmes affect their sense of connectedness. Ideally, all schools will recognise these as ways to support students’ overall education and wellbeing outcomes. What matters is that conditions in the children’s school settings are deliberately designed and not left to chance. School leaders and policymakers must reorient school improvement plans and education policy agendas to foster children’s connectedness to school and with it, their ability to navigate current and future .

This blog post is based on the article by Jordana Hoenig and Therese Cumming, published in the British Educational Research Journal.

References

Hoenig, J. F., & Cumming, T. M. (2026). Primary school students’ perceptions of school connectedness: ‘You’re all in it together’. Australian Educational Researcher, 53, Article 12.

Rowe, F., & Stewart, D. (2011). Promoting connectedness through whole‐school approaches: Key elements and pathways of influence. Health Education, 111(1), 49–65,