Students’ well-being in school is important in itself and an objective in most school curriculums around the world. The importance of students’ well-being is primarily related to the general ambition of having healthy students and adults in society. However, in the educational context, the students’ well-being is also significantly related to academic success (Durlak, et.al., 2011). Schools and classrooms with confident and healthy students improves the learning climate. Students lacking sufficient socio-emotional competencies have a higher risk for developing behavioural problems, learning difficulties and poorer school success, poorer peer relationships, alcohol and drug use in adolescence, and poorer mental health in the future (Novak, et al., 2010). Moreover, students’ well-being is also related to problems such as discrimination, bullying and academic stress. An important part of students’ well-being is their sense of belonging in school. This can be defined as feeling of acceptance by the rest of the group and as a member of a community (Baumeister & Leary, 1995). In the PISA survey the sense of belonging is measured in the student questionnaire with these five questions (e.g. I feel like I belong at school; I feel like an outsider) that forms the index ‘sense of belonging’ (OECD,2017). In the 67 countries that participated in PISA 2015 a majority of students feel that they belong to the school community. There are, however, in many countries signs that students’ sense of belonging at school has weakened since 2003, and this is true for Sweden and Germany. Slovenia and Croatia did not participate in PISA 2003 but when comparisons are made between 2015 and 2012 all four HAND in HAND (HinH) countries shows a weakened sense of belonging among 15 year old students. Boys feels a stronger sense of belonging than girls on average over the OECD countries including Sweden, Germany and Slovenia. In Croatia, there are no difference between boys and girls in sense of belonging (PISA, 2017). The HinH project targets these problems by developing a program for students. This program builds on the CASEL (2018) model. For example, Ashdown and Bernard (2012) have outlined five core social and emotional competencies that are important foundations for young people’s well-being: self-awareness, social awareness, self-management, relationship skills, and responsible decision-making. In the HinH project the intercultural competence is added to the CASEL model and the project aims to change the role played by SEI competencies in educational settings, especially schools.

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