Socio-emotional characteristics in early childhood and offending behaviour in adolescence

This research used data made available via the Office for National Statistics (ONS) Secure Research Service, which is being expanded and improved with ADR UK funding.

Author: Dr Paul Garcia, ISER (University of Essex)

Date: December 2025

Research summary

This research explores how children’s social and emotional development in early life relates to offending during adolescence, and how school experiences such as exclusion or poor attainment may influence this. The findings have informed discussions on school behaviour and early intervention with stakeholders including the Department for Education, Welsh Government, Youth Endowment Fund, Centre for Justice Innovation, National Children’s Bureau, and British Association of Social Workers. This research has also contributed to policy debates on early risk identification and supported the award of further research funding.

This research is funded by an ADR UK Research Fellowship (ES/Z502601/1).

Data used

This study used linked, de-identified administrative data from the Ministry of Justice and Department for Education (MoJ–DfE). It draws on point-scale indicators of child development from the Early Years Foundation Stage Profile (EYFSP) for three cohorts of pupils aged 4–5 in the 2006/07, 2007/08, and 2008/09 school years. These records are linked to later educational outcomes, including absences, exclusions, and Key Stage 2 assessments, as well as cautions and convictions recorded between ages 11–17 in the Police National Computer (PNC).

Methods used

The analysis focused on identifying patterns in early childhood development and examining how these relate to adolescent offending.

Exploratory Structural Equation Modelling (ESEM) was used, a statistical technique that uncovers underlying dimensions within the Early Years Foundation Stage Profile data, distinguishing, for example, between cognitive abilities and socio-emotional skills. This approach is flexible enough to reflect how real child development often spans multiple areas, while still providing a structured framework for analysis.

The study then used mediation analysis to examine potential pathways: whether early developmental difficulties relate to adolescent offending directly, or whether they work indirectly through educational experiences such as lower attainment, school exclusions, or persistent absence. This helps clarify the mechanisms linking early childhood characteristics to later outcomes.

Research findings

Early childhood development comprises distinct cognitive and socio-emotional domains, with different predictive patterns

Factor analysis of Early Years Foundation Stage Profile data identified two developmental dimensions:

• a cognitive domain capturing numeracy, reading, and writing abilities
• a socio-emotional domain reflecting interpersonal skills, emotional regulation, and communication.

Cognitive difficulties emerge as the dominant predictor of poor academic attainment, while socio-emotional difficulties strongly predict school exclusions.

Exclusions operate as a critical pathway between early socio-emotional difficulties and adolescent offending

Children who are excluded are more than twice as likely to offend in adolescence, making exclusion the strongest school-based predictor.

Socio-emotional difficulties in childhood substantially increase exclusion risk, creating an indirect pathway to offending. However, even after accounting for exclusions, absenteeism, and academic attainment, socio-emotional difficulties retain a direct association with offending, with roughly half of their overall effect operating through school pathways and half operating directly.

In contrast, cognitive difficulties influence offending mainly through their impact on academic attainment, with no direct link once Key Stage 2 performance is considered.