Roots of Empathy (NEBT)

What does this project involve?

The Nurturing Empathy Before Transition (NEBT) programme aims to increase empathy, improve social and emotional skills, and reduce aggression and bullying amongst Year 5 children. In the long term, the programme aims to reduce violent behaviour and offending. Delivered by the charity Roots of Empathy (ROE), the intervention places a parent and their baby in Year 5 classrooms as part of a structured programme of lessons designed to develop empathy.  

Children receive 27 45-minute sessions that cover nine themes (with three sessions delivered each theme). Examples of themes include meeting the baby, relationships, and communicating. Nine of the sessions are pre-family visit sessions, where children discuss what to expect; nine sessions are family visits, where children observe the baby’s feelings, intentions and attachment to their parent; and nine sessions are post-family visits, where children reflect on their own feelings and the feelings of others.  

Sessions are delivered by an instructor who is trained by ROE. While previous research on ROE has been delivered by certified instructors who have completed training, in this project sessions were delivered by school-based teaching assistants (TAs) who were not certified at the start of the programme. Delivery in this project took place in five regions (Yorkshire, Merseyside, East and West Midlands, Greater London and Wales). 

Why did YEF fund this project?

Seven out of ten children who admit to perpetrating violence say that they did so because they were provoked. We know that supporting children to develop their social skills, think before they act, understand others’ perspectives and manage aggression can reduce their risk of being involved in violence. Indeed, the YEF Toolkit explains that social skills training can have a high impact on children’s involvement in violent crime, and we have a high level of confidence in this estimate. However, there are very few UK-based programmes that have evidenced this impact, and so YEF has funded the evaluation of a range of social and emotional skills development interventions to build the evidence base. NEBT is one such intervention. Roots of Empathy has also evidenced an impact on children’s behaviour in robust evaluations.    

YEF funded a randomised controlled trial of NEBT.  The trial aimed to assess the impact of NEBT on self-reported behavioural difficulties (as measured by the self-report Me and My Feelings (M&MF) questionnaire behavioural difficulties sub-scale). It also aimed to assess the impact on self-reported emotional difficulties and empathy, as well as on teacher-reported child behaviour.

The evaluation was undertaken in two cohorts. Cohort 1 was delivered in 2022/3, with 16 intervention schools (that received NEBT) and 17 control schools (that continued with business as usual). Cohort 2 was delivered in 2023/4 to 30 intervention schools and 24 control schools (resulting in a total of 87 trial schools across both cohorts, 46 intervention [including 910 children] and 41 control schools [including 752 children]).

The evaluation also included an implementation and process evaluation (IPE) that examined the key factors influencing the delivery of NEBT and explored the perceptions of children, teachers and deliverers. The IPE used eight case studies, observations of training sessions and the delivery of NEBT in classrooms, eight interviews with instructors and eight interviews with class teachers. It also conducted four interviews with senior school leaders, an interview with ROE and seven focus groups with children.

The evaluation of NEBT in this project was impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. Preparatory work began before the pandemic, and school closures led to pauses and delays. The impact of COVID-19 on schools and children and the heightened pressure and demand on these schools may also have impacted delivery. 

Key conclusions

NEBT had a small impact on reducing children’s self-reported behavioural difficulties. After the programme, children in NEBT schools reported slightly lower levels of behavioural difficulty compared to their counterparts in schools that did not receive NEBT. This result has an extremely low security rating.

NEBT had no impact on children’s self-reported emotional difficulties or their cognitive empathy (understanding others’ thoughts). It had a moderate impact on their self-reported affective empathy (empathy with others’ emotions). NEBT showed a large impact on reducing teacher-reported behavioural difficulties, and this impact was driven by large impacts on reducing peer problems and hyperactivity and moderate impacts on reducing conduct and emotional problems. NEBT also showed a large impact on improving teacher-reported pro-social behaviour. These are the secondary outcomes, which should be interpreted with even more caution.

A very high level of attrition from the evaluation significantly weakens our confidence in the findings. 61% of children who started the trial were not included in the final analysis. 23/46 NEBT schools dropped out shortly after randomisation. School concerns regarding the time taken to deliver NEBT and measurement burden may have contributed to attrition.

61% of intervention schools delivered 8 out of 9 themes from the NEBT curriculum. TAs often made amendments to session scheduling to ensure that the content could be covered in time.

Positive relationships between teachers and the teaching assistants delivering NEBT, physical space for the sessions, and flexibility from mothers and school settings supported delivery. Barriers to delivery included challenges in recruiting mothers for some schools and insufficient time for TAs to prepare for sessions.

How secure is the evidence? 

These findings have an extremely low security rating (0/5 magnifying glasses). While the trial was set up as a well-designed efficacy randomised controlled trial that was large enough to detect meaningful impacts, a very high level of attrition substantially reduces the confidence we can have in the findings. 61% of the children who started the trial were not included in the final analysis because they did not participate in endline testing. We do not know if the effect found for NEBT would be the same if the children missing from the final analysis were included.  

Should you fund or deliver NEBT?

The high level of attrition in the trial severely limits our ability to make a recommendation on whether schools should or should not deliver the programme. 

We do know that the wider evidence base suggests that both primary and secondary schools should deliver a range of interventions to develop children’s social and emotional skills. These include explicitly teaching social and emotional skills in PSHE lessons, providing targeted support to children who need help developing these skills, and implementing whole school strategies to build social and emotional skills. More information on these interventions may be found in recommendation 3 of our Education Practice Guidance. 

As part of these whole-school efforts, a programme like NEBT could play a role in developing children’s social and emotional skills. However, given the findings from the evaluation (including the findings from the Implementation and Process Evaluation), schools should carefully consider how they would make the time and capacity required for the programme, how it would fit alongside existing PSHE provision, how to provide teaching assistants with adequate time to prepare, and how to support children with complex home situations (who may be distressed by some of the content).   

What will YEF do next?

YEF has no further plans to evaluate or invest in NEBT.  

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