Education is increasingly important for its role in assisting young people to develop the capacities and skills that will enable them to live and be well. The promotion of social cohesion, a staple item within OECD educational policies for over a decade, is increasingly relevant as school communities become more diverse and as the marginalization of some groups from the benefits of education become entrenched. It has proven very difficult to achieve a balance between the important education goals of wellbeing and social cohesion and the other (dominant) strand that informs educational policies: the desire to have a close fit between young people’s skills and the needs of national economies. The bias towards economistic aproaches to education inevitably marginalises what many young people, teachers and parents understand – that learning is important in assisting young people to choose and achieve those things they value and in enhancing individual and community wellbeing. When economistic aproaches dominate, they often co-opt and subvert broader social goals and initiatives and narrow the meaning of wellbeing. School leaders therefore have an important role to play in the implementation of policies that give schools permission to focus on individual and community wellbeing. I discuss the imperative for educational leaders to take wellbeing more seriously in a context of social change. I explore the complexities of addressing young people’s wellbeing through education focusing on the examples of obesity, mental health and drug use. I argue that addressing young people’s wellbeing has significant implications for the decisions that school leaders make about curriculum as they implement new educational programs for changing times.
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