Seen in an evolutionary context, human development is associated with the ability to understand social interactions, to achieve a balance between competition and co-operation and so live productively in ever-more-complex social groups. In 'The Prehistory of the Mind' (1996) Steven Mithen brings together ideas and evidence to support the view that language has its roots in social intelligence, which developed in order to communicate intention and formulate rules in societies of 100-150 people operating at up to five levels of intentionality. Mithen refers to soap opera themes which operate at three levels of intentionality, often being about 'beliefs of what others believe a third party believes'. Soap operas, just like primitive societies, are about access to food, drink, friendship, sex and power, with violence and death never far away. Social intelligence as applied to both real and imagined worlds allows people to 'read minds' and understand feelings.

Mithen argues that both language and image-making have served as means of communication and have enabled homo sapiens to achieve a high level of cognitive fluidity and the ability to reflect on thinking and doing. He sees art as one of the highest cultural achievements, since it is concerned with creating artefacts or images with symbolic meanings as a means of communication. Art often creates imaginal links between thought and feeling across domains of experience, such as one's awareness of the natural world, and aspects of technical, social, emotional and linguistic 'intelligence'.

A socially and emotionally aware society will prepare its children for living by creating learning environments that enable them to move with confidence from the small family group into larger work-oriented or recreational groups. It will design schools to facilitate this process, paying particular attention to the need to create group sizes that are optimal for different kinds of learning. It will not uniformly apply an industrial assembly line model to the process of education.

Every school should provide every pupil with a sense of belonging and with a positive view of self-worth. Every pupil should share in high quality experiences which promote intellectual, social and emotional development.

NATURE AND NURTURE

Children share certain experiences within the family as well as in and out of school. Family members also have non-shared experiences, or react to similar situations in different ways. Everyone is also influenced by their genes. Rushton and others (1986) summarised evidence from twin studies to show that positive aspects of social attitudes and behaviour such as empathy and nurturance are on average equally influenced by genetic and by environmental factors, while antisocial behaviour has been found to be much more heavily influenced by environmental factors, especially (in the case of twins) by shared experiences (Stevenson, 1997). In Stevenson's study, only a quarter of the variance of parental ratings of antisocial behaviour was attributable to genetic factors. We don't ignore the teaching of spelling because it has a high heritability factor: we would be unwise to ignore the potential influence of school experience on both prosocial and antisocial behaviour.

If a great deal of antisocial behaviour is a learned reaction to frustrating or hurtful experience, it is sensible to invest in systems that will provide many more positive than negative experiences for children and young people, and give them coping strategies as well as social support. We need to view most antisocial behaviour as a learned style of response rather than as a constitutionally inevitable fact of life. Dennis Stott's concept of 'inconsequential' behaviour (Stott, 1966), a term which applies to children who tend to be restless, impulsive and inclined to lose their temper, is a more positive way of describing behaviour than the term 'attention deficicit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).

Stott's research relied on ratings of behaviour by teachers, parents and carers. Among other things it showed that antisocial and 'inconsequential' behaviour increased dramatically during the early years of schooling, reaching a peak at the age of 9. Many researchers have shown that there are no marked gender differences in antisocial behaviour in the pre-school years (Loeber and Hay, 1997). It has also been shown that after a few years in school there are about three times as many antisocial and aggressive boys as girls. Antisocial, inconsequential and aggressive behaviour are associated with poor academic progress, so it makes sense to see what schools can do help boys keep up with girls in behaviour as well as in learning. There are some schools that achieve this, but they have not been studied in a systematic way.

APPROACHES TO INTERVENTION

What is not needed are interventions that:

• make things worse (some do)
• seem to blame, take away responsibility or diminish hope
• are unrealistic
• are not for the poor
• clash with cultural or educational values
• do not concern themselves with real-life settings
• do not enlist the support of families and schools
• are not cost-effective.

Coming from a child-guidance psychiatric background, Strayhorn (1988) produced a powerul evidence-based case for a move 'from the therapist's office to the community' and made the following list of work in progress and 'work that should be in progress':

• parent training in a variety of settings
• modelling stories and plays, delivered by parents for pre-schoolers

• teacher-mediated interventions using modelling stories and plays in preschools and schools

• peer-mediated interventions using modelling stories and plays in schools

• modelling and instruction presented through the readings children are assigned in school

• fantasy practice through story writing in the schools
• public recognition of skillful patterns in schools
• use of previously listed methods in religious organisations
• use of previously listed methods in families
• organisation and promotion of positive models in the electronic and print media.

The idea of using schools (as well as clinics) as community resources for learning is not a new one. However, it is rare for a school to be planned as a community resource for educational and social use as well as for the promotion of mental health. Yet there are already many instances of schools being used for all these purposes. Members of many professional disciplines currently work in and from schools, and what follows are some examples of such work known to the writer.

The Behaviour Curriculum Project (Cumbria LEA)

This project has been running for three years in three primary schools and has led to the production of a Behaviour Curriculum which includes a Programme of Study, Key Skills and Level Descriptions. The curriculum was produced by teachers working with an educational psychologist and took account of abilities listed by Daniel Goleman (1995) and by OFSTED (1995). The project seeks to promote effective practice throughout a school by asking staff to create conditions for social and emotional development in terms of school organisation, classroom environment and organisation, teaching strategies, pupil grouping and playtime experience. Funding has now been secured to take the project into up to 40 schools as a vehicle for whole school staff development, supported by school-based facilitators. Among the teaching approaches to be encouraged are the use of stilling, circle time, drama and role play. Teachers will use these on a regular basis (30-60 mins. each week).

An unpublished evaluation of the initial phase of the project suggests that teachers valued the process of formulating the curriculum and see many actual and potential benefits in it. Most believe it makes explicit what they were already doing. However, there is as yet no hard evidence of observable changes in their classrooms. The test will come next term when the work will be extended to other schools and the teachers will be expected to implement specific teaching strategies after receiving training.

(Director: Toby Quibell)

TLC was set up in 1993 at the time of the rioting on the Meadow Well estate and during the last three years has been operating with more than 100 children in primary, middle and secondary schools. Toby Quibell is a teacher and dramatherapist and works with children put forward by teachers as having significant social and emotional needs. Approximately half of each age-group has been randomly assigned to a drama groupwork intervention or to a curriculum studies small group teaching intervention led by Toby Quibell. The work takes place in the schools and consists of twelve weekly sessions of one hour. Trust games and fun activities are included as well as drama-based exercises that explore issues that are current for group members. Throughout, the therapist liaises informally with teaching staff in order to share understanding of pupils' needs and progress.

The project has been designed with built-in data collection before, during and after intervention in the form of (a) classroom observations and (b) ratings from pupils, parents and teachers. To date there is complete information on about 80 pupils during the intervention period, but on a smaller number for follow-up. Unfortunately, the classroom observation data has not yet been analysed, but there is a consistent trend in favour of the drama intervention group on the behaviour rating and self-concept measures. Also, for the first time ever, this year there have been no exclusions from the high school.

Over the intervention period teachers reported statistically significant improvements in both internalising and externalising aspects of behaviour, with an effect size of .050 for the drama group but only 0.20 for the curriculum studies control group. Parents reported a significant improvement for the drama group on internalising aspects of behaviour (effect size 0.51). However this did not apply for the curriculum studies group and was not seen by parents on externalising aspects of behaviour for either group. Similar results obtained for the self-report measure, with an effect size of .47 for improvement in internalising behaviour in the drama group. On the self-concept measure the effect sizes for improvement during intervention were larger for the drama group on four scales, but somewhat lower on the academic and family scales.

It is clear that the gains recorded are attributable to a partnership between the schools and the TLC project. The effect sizes looked at over longer periods (for example, pre-intervention to follow-up) are generally higher than during the intervention period itself. Yet the drama group pupils almost always had the edge, even though the teachers rating them would not in many cases have known which group they attended.

One interpretation of these results is that the intervention led to an improvement in both under-reacting (internalising) and over-reacting (externalising) behaviour in school (where it was observed by the teachers), but that over-reacting (including aggressive) behaviour was not affected out of school (where no intervention had taken place). However, it seems clear that the pupils themselves felt generally happier and that this improvement was noted by parents as well as teachers.

The TLC project is now entering on a second phase of development in which it seeks to find effective ways of working with parents as well as with a multiplicity of agencies that interact with the schools. It will be important to establish that the methods used can be implemented as effectively by other therapists and to collect 'hard' data in order to evaluate the impact of the project on learning and behaviour.

The Place to Be (Lambeth and Southwark)

(Consultant: Joan Baxter)

This project has run for four years in three primary schools and is due to extend to eight more in the Croydon Education Action Zone. It focusses on work with children who have IEP's and is staffed in each school by a part-time school project manager with a clinical/therapist qualification and by four volunteers who are undertaking placements while in training as therapists. The staff offer weekly individual therapy to referred children as well as groupwork sessions (with an emphasis on play therapy). A lunch-time drop-in facility is also provided. At the same time an educational psychologist provides consultation sessions for teachers and SENCO's are trained in brief therapy techniques in order to work more effectively with the parents who attend review meetings.

This multi-faceted approach has been very well received by teachers and in one school there is a clear reduction in the numbers of children on the special needs register and an improvement in school attendance.

Girls' Violence Group (Gateshead LEA)

At the invitation of a secondary school drama teacher, two educational psychologists and the drama teacher set up a group for pupils who were known to be involved in violent acts and in bullying. Three or four of the girls' mothers have also attended the sessions. Part of the approach has used role play of realistic situations followed by reflection on the feelings of the parties involved and consideration of alternative strategies. The behaviour of the girls has improved and they are now being trained to act as behaviour mentors with younger children in the school.

PERSONAL AND SOCIAL EDUCATION

Many of the initiatives described above involve co-operation between teachers and professionals with an interest in mental health. However, some are conceived as educational approaches that are an integral part of the life and function of a school. After all, schools provide opportunities for children to establish relationships, to experience the benefits of structure, discipline and care and to feel safe, purposeful and happy. Schools can involve everyone in planning and operating policies for the regulation of behaviour and there are many opportunities in the curriculum for applying a thinking skills approach to social and moral issues. In other words, a good school is a therapeutic community (Cooper, 1993). It is also a place where people acquire skills and knowledge and share in creative activity and expression. A good school offers not just talking, writing and ICT, but enjoyment of and excellence of achievement in art, dance, drama, and music (OFSTED, 1998).

The quality of educational experience depends on personal contact and influence. In part it is a function of group size, since some activities require small groups and others can be more powerfully experienced in a crowd (e.g. playing as opposed to watching football). In a large-scale study of more than 16,000 classrooms, Olson (1970) showed that quality of educational experience as measured by social and emotional indicators such as co-operation and interpersonal regard was highest in groups of up to six, and became lower in a stepwise fashion, with the critical boundaries being 6, 15 and 25. This suggests that it would be worthhile for schools to create systems and timetables that ensure that all pupils enjoy a certain amount of time working in smaller groups, even if at other times they are in slightly larger full classes. Education would then become both more personal and more social.

It would be a healthy development if activities such as those advocated by Strayhorn were seamlessly incorporated into the curriculum. While there will always be a need for specialised intervention for highly disturbed individuals and families, the most promising way of achieving greater social inclusion and reducing the cost of disaffection is by providing quality education for all.

INTER-AGENCY WORK

If more importance is given to emotional and social education as an integral part of the education system, the need for further tiers of professional provision is likely to be reduced. Similarly it is possible through effective service delivery close to the community to reduce the need for more remote and expensive options such as Tier 3 mental health provision or residential placement for children with emotional and behavioural disorders. In Cornwall a system of multidisciplinary provision has been established which has been able to reduce waiting lists and the rate of referral to psychiatric services.

The Cornwall Child and Family Services are funded by Education, Health and Social Services and jointly managed by a clinical psychologist and an educational psychologist. Local multidisciplinary teams provide direct therapeutic services to schools and to families, using a variety of short-term interventions, including dramatherapy, art therapy and solution-focussed family therapy. They also support a number of mentoring schemes and make increasing use of close-to-home placement and treatment options. Teams include teachers, educational welfare officers, psychologists, social workers, psychiatric nurses and therapists. Work is allocated between team members according to interest and expertise. The model is constantly developing and is moving towards more rigorous evaluation of service delivery. It is favourably described in a recent audit (Harbottle, 1998) and is in tune with current recommendations for the development of integrated services that focus on the needs of the child (House of Commons Education and Employment Committee, 1998).

POLICY IMPLICATIONS

Responsibility for nurturing the next generation belongs to society as a whole. With Strayhorn I have argued that schools have a central part to play in promoting good behaviour and in the development of emotional intelligence. In doing so they need to draw on the skills of a wide range of professional and volunteer workers. Emotional intelligence is part of the human inheritance, not a secret garden to which only therapists have access.

It follows from this that all those who work with children and young people should be excellent communicators and should meet demanding criteria in terms of personal qualities. The training of all such people (including nursery nurses, teachers, social workers, psychologists, doctors, nurses, therapists and counsellors and members of the police and fire services) should include an experiental groupwork component as well as study of social and emotional development and of effective practice.

As those who work with young people need to collaborate with members of other disciplines, all such professionals should learn how to do this through practical experience in their initial training period. Course validation should be made dependent on such a requirement.

In addition there is a need to provide more intensive training for substantial numbers of teachers who will act as school behaviour facilitators and run groupwork programmes. This may be seen as an extension of the SENCO role, but may also appeal to teachers with backgrounds in practical subjects or the creative arts. It could also become part of the planned three-year extended training for educational pysychologists. It would justify a qualification in its own right and would operate through supervised practical work linked with academic study.

As the cost of providing a specialist teacher or educational psychologist for a pyramid of schools is not excessive (approx. 0.75% of total teaching salary costs per pyramid), there should be a large-scale trials of interventions based on active group-work principles and supported by a range of complementary strategies for parental, community and multi-disciplinary involvement. In this way it should be possible for each pupil to experience, once at each Key Stage, a term of weekly groupwork sessions with a drama or role-play component.

New schools should be planned and existing schools should be adapted as community resources for educational and social use as well as for the promotion of mental health. This idea has design implications for the use of spaces, especially if ICT is to play a significant part in such developments.

Steps should be taken to promote effective practice across disciplines. Information about effective practice should be shared more freely within disciplines, across disciplines and with the wider community.

It is important that the cost-effectiveness of preventative and therapeutic interventions be systematically studied. The cost of disaffection, fire-setting, youth violence and youth crime is increasing year on year. Yet there are virtually no reports in the literature of longitudinal studies of the effects of educational and therapeutic interventions on long-term life chances and cost-savings to society.

Among the many high priority issues that merit further research and evaluation is what schools can do to ensure that boys progress at least as well as girls. Questions of this kind can be addressed by relating added-value evidence to contextual and observational data.

Educational psychologists are equipped by their training to contribute to research and evaluation studies. They are already heavily involved in evaluating a wide range of developments in service delivery and in educational practice based on psychological theory, such as behaviour management, peer tutoring, circle time, thinking skills and the uses of ICT for pupils with special needs. LEA's and government should make more focussed and deliberate use of these skills when seeking to build effective systems on research evidence.

REFERENCES

Cooper, P. (1993) Effective Schools for Disaffected Students. London, Routledge.

Goleman, D. (1996) Emotional Intelligence. London, Bloomsbury.

Harbottle, C. (1998) Cornwall Healthcare NHS Trust District Audit Report: Child and Adolescent Mental Health. South and West Region, District Audit Office.

House of Commons Education and Employment Committee (1998) Fifth Report: Disaffected Children. London, HMSO.

Loeber, R. and Hay, D. (1997) Key issues in the development of aggression and violence from childhood to early adulthood. Annual Review of Psychology, 48, 371-410.

Mithen, S. (1996) The Prehistory of the Mind. London, Thames and Hudson.

OFSTED (1995) Guidance on the Inspection of Nursery and Primary Schools. London, HMSO.

OFSTED (1998) The Arts Inspected: good teaching in art, dance, drama, music. London, Heinemann.

Olson, M.N. (1970) Indicators of Quality (Research Bulletin, 11,1). New York, Institute of Administrative Research, Teachers' College, Columbia University.

Rushton, J.P., Fulker, D.W., Neale, M.C., Nias, D.K. and Eysenck, H.J. (1986) Altruism and aggression: the heritability of individual differences. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 50, 192-198.

Stevenson, J. (1997) The genetic basis of personality. In Cooper, C. and Varma, V. (eds.) Processes in Individual Differences. London, Routledge.

Stott, D.H. (1966) Studies of Troublesome Children. London, Tavistock Publications.