Skills for Life: Social Skills for Inter-Ethnic Cohesion
Date issued
Apr 2021
Subject
Children;
Ethnicity;
Socio-Emotional Skill;
Youth Violence;
21st-Century Skill;
Diversity and Inclusion;
Socio-Emotional Development;
School Violence
JEL code
I24 - Education and Inequality;
I25 - Education and Economic Development;
I28 - Government Policy;
I20 - Education and Research Institutions: General
Category
Magazines, Journals and Newsletters
Social skills are essential to building empowered and cohesive communities in ethnic diversity. In a world with massive population movements and growing anti-immigrant sentiments, schools stand out as important platforms to instill key social skills into our children to build inter-ethnic cohesion. Achieving this requires the implementation of rigorously tested educational actions. This brief provides the evaluation results of a particular educational program that was implemented in a high-stakes context where the ethnic composition of schools changed abruptly due to a massive refugee influx. The program significantly lowered peer violence and ethnic segregation in schools, and improved prosociality in children.