This project is a pilot evaluation randomised controlled trial of Face It, a school-based intervention designed and implemented by Khulisa. Face It is specifically designed for young people at risk of offending, exploitation and school exclusion. The programme builds self-awareness and encourages pupils to reflect on the root causes and triggers of their disruptive or challenging behaviour. Khulisa believes that early intervention breaks the school to prison pipeline, which is exacerbated by exclusion, enabling young people to choose a safe and crime-free future. The intervention is delivered over 6 weeks, including an intensive 5-day programme of activities, and pre-programme and post-programme group and 1:1 sessions. Each programme is tailored to participants' needs and uses art, storytelling, 1:1 and group experiential techniques, delivered by trained dramatherapists.

The randomised controlled trial will test the programme's feasibility, acceptability, evaluability, mechanisms and outcomes, to determine whether the trial should proceed to a full-scale efficacy trial through quantitative and qualitative data collection.

Face It is a schools-based intervention, developed by Khulisa. It is an intensive therapeutic group programme for young people, focused on developing social and emotional skills and designed to explore the root causes of emotional distress. It combines creative techniques like storytelling, art, debating, and role-play, informed by neuroscience.

There is strong evidence that social and emotional skills are important for the positive development of children and young people, and contribute to a range of important long-term educational, economic, health, social and criminal justice outcomes. There is also good evidence that well-designed school-based social and emotional programmes can be effective, that they are being successfully implemented in UK schools, and can have positive impact on students' social and emotional competencies and educational outcomes.

The Face It intervention is in its early stages in terms of evidence and evaluation, and there is not yet a robust randomised control trial demonstrating that it is effective at improving outcomes for children and young people. However, Face It indicates early promise as an intervention to improve social and emotional skills. The intervention has demonstrated that it can recruit and retain participants, and qualitative work indicates that the programme is well-regarded by participants. An internal evaluation of the programme conducted by Nesta indicated that Khulisa's theory of change highlights relevant outcomes, and both quantitative and qualitative insights suggested largely positive changes in the outcomes examined. Khulisa is also currently conducting a quasi-experimental study which is scheduled to be completed in the Autumn 2023. These studies collectively show that the intervention shows promise.

However, the lack of a randomised comparison group in the existing evaluations limits the conclusions that can be made about impact on outcomes for children and young people. Before any future full-scale randomised control trial, it is important that a small-scale pilot trial is conducted in advance to support and inform this work - to test and improve evaluation procedures such as randomisation and data collection, and to generate useful information around sample size determination.

Inclusion Criteria:

• Students in years 9-10
• Students who speak functional English
• Students who are willing to take part in the programme
• Students who have experienced relational or social adversity
• Students who have disengaged from education

Exclusion Criteria:

• Students who are permanently excluded or not in full-time mainstream education
• Students with SEND who receive 1 to 1 support
• Students with active, severe and unaddressed safeguarding or mental health risk(s)
• Students who are actively receiving mental health support

After the project has been completed, data will be shared with YEF and stored in the YEF archives.

Approved researchers may apply to access YEF data via the ONS secure research service. This will be accessed via their own project space created in ONS secure research environment by the ONS. They may apply to the DfE and MoJ to access the linked NPD-PNC data, and if successful it will be made available here to combine with the YEF evaluation data, using the PMRs. Researchers will only be able to access pseudonymised data. All results will be published in a deidentified form.

Data will be shared with YEF within 6 months after submission of the final report to YEF.

Researchers who are approved by the YEF and accredited to work with ONS data.

Baseline and post-treatment assessment will be conducted by researchers who are blind to treatment allocation. Young people, teachers and families are not blind to treatment allocation.