Report Reveals Belonging Is Not Equal for All Students

When the OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) results are released, the focus is usually on the academics: maths scores, science results, and reading. And I appreciate that for many people, academic outcomes are a central goal of schools. But I'm a belonging researcher, so what I really want to know is whether students feel like they belong at school.

The PISA dataset is a unique opportunity to learn more about students' experiences of belonging, how these differ between groups and countries, and how they change over time. While the data represents 15-year-olds, rather than all young people, it offers a unique snapshot at an important developmental age for belonging.

The Latest PISA Report

The latest PISA report, released in September 2026, gives us an international perspective with some findings worth celebrating. On average across OECD countries, 76 percent of 15-year-olds agreed or strongly agreed they felt like they belonged at school. Between 2022 and 2025, belonging scores increased in most participating countries and economies, though it's worth keeping in mind that the previous data were collected fresh off a global pandemic, when many school systems pivoted to online for the first time. This may have strained students' belonging to school when they weren't physically there. I mean, no one needed to worry about being an outsider at school. They were outside. Literally.

Benefits of Belonging

Belonging has well-documented benefits, but the PISA report shows that students with stronger belonging were more likely to report putting in extra effort when things became challenging. On average across OECD countries, 68 percent of students in the highest quarter of school belonging reported this, compared with 51 percent in the lowest quarter. This makes belonging a worthwhile pursuit, especially given other evidence linking school belonging with academic motivation (Korpershoek et al., 2020).

But, as expected, there is nuance with the PISA data because the findings vary across the world. Boys reported stronger belonging than girls in 63 education systems. The reverse was found in Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, the Palestinian Authority, and Dushanbe, Tajikistan. Socioeconomically advantaged students generally reported stronger belonging than their disadvantaged peers, although Kenya was the only country where this pattern was reversed. Another concern is that many students still do not feel like they belong at school. On average, across OECD countries, about 24 percent, nearly one in four students, disagreed or strongly disagreed that they belonged at school. Separately, 19 percent reported feeling awkward and out of place, 15 percent felt like outsiders or left out, and 13 percent felt lonely at school. And of course, the latest PISA may not have captured the more pressing concerns about belonging, like what happens to a student's school belonging when a school has been destroyed by war or when safety and access to education are the more urgent priorities. We need to acknowledge that belonging may be harder (or even impossible) for some students, but it is still critical. Everyone should have the right to feel like they belong at school.

How Schools Can Support Belonging

Given the well-established importance of belonging, the link with student well-being, and the fact that students do not experience it equally, inherently, or automatically, the International Baccalaureate commissioned The Science of Belonging, which I coauthored with Shiqi Dong. The report draws together research on what school belonging means and how schools can support it. We describe belonging as follows.

"School belonging can therefore be defined as a student’s experienced sense of legitimate membership within the school community" (Allen & Dong, 2026).

When we consider how schools can support belonging, it's about a student coming to school and feeling comfortable and safe. It's about them feeling supported. It's about them being able to see that their classmates are cared for and supported. It's about them being able to see their goals and their representation in school policy.

And the messages sent to students should be considered, whether through posters on the walls, notes in diaries, or school policies. For instance, the Hindu child who attends a school should not come across a policy prohibiting a shaved head shortly after his father has died.

Or the student who has broken their leg and can't get into the school grounds because there aren't any ramps. Or the student with dyslexia who receives reports every term saying "they have poor spelling."

The report explains how these everyday experiences can inform a student's sense of belonging.

"Students assess their belonging through patterns of interaction over time, drawing inferences from how consistently they are treated with respect, whether they can participate without fear of harm or humiliation, and whether their presence and contributions are taken seriously" (Allen & Dong, 2026).

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The report offers advice for building school belonging across four areas: opportunities, perceptions, competencies, and motivations. Here are three examples.

• "Understand the diversity of children’s learning needs and provide opportunity and supports to meet them."
• "Embed recognition of the diverse cultures which make up the school community within school policy."
• "Provide comprehensive and developmentally appropriate feedback to students to make sense of their learning processes."

The report considers studies that follow students over time and studies examining school practices designed to support belonging. A systematic review I coauthored identified 22 controlled trials, 14 of which reported improvements in adolescent school belonging (Allen et al., 2022). But evidence for particular approaches varies. Schools need to examine changes to belonging within their own context and setting. As such, the report also addresses initial implementation and contextual variation.

Looking at the whole student means considering their sense of belonging within their school setting, including the full spectrum of experiences, even ones beyond their control. For schools not already measuring belonging, a brief, validated measure suited to their students can help, alongside conversations about their experiences.

But if we ask students to spend time responding to a survey, we have an ethical responsibility to act on the findings. Students should know how their responses will be used and have a say in what needs to change. We then need to check whether our response has helped. If we ask students for their time and honesty, we should take responsibility for acting on their responses.