In many countries, children and young people are returning to school, and hopefully, those schools will focus on good, effective teaching methods and a knowledge-rich curriculum, but… a good relationship with your students is also essential, something I also focused on in my own research. New research examines the extent to which such a good relationship really makes a difference. Valentin Emslander and colleagues (2025) have compiled more than seventy years of study in a second-order meta-analysis. That is, a meta-analysis of meta-analyses. In total, their work involves 26 previous meta-analyses, encompassing data from over 2.6 million students from preschool to secondary school.

The conclusion is impressive in its breadth: the teacher-student relationship is linked not only to academic performance, but also to motivation, executive functions and self-control, emotions, classroom behaviour, well-being, and school engagement. This is not surprising; problem behaviour also decreases when this relationship is strong. Only the link with bullying proved weak and inconclusive.

It’s striking that these connections seem to strengthen in secondary education. While you might expect young people to gravitate towards their peers, the bond with their teacher appears to be even more crucial.

What does this mean in practice? There are at least three lessons for policy and practice:

1. Consciously invest in relationships. This isn’t about “being nice,” but about making it a structural component of education. Teacher training programs should focus equally on relationship skills as on subject matter expertise and teaching methods.
2. Support teachers in complex relationships. The research shows that negative relationships have the same impact, but in the wrong direction. This requires reflection, training in conflict management, and also attention to the well-being of teachers themselves.
3. Think of relationships as a lever for achieving multiple goals. Whether you’re aiming for better learning outcomes, fewer behavioural problems, or increased motivation, a strong teacher-student relationship is supportive in almost every way.

The meta-analysis concludes that policymakers and school leaders must take this issue seriously. It’s not something “add-on” to the core of education; it’s the core of it because those who feel seen and supported learn better.

Abstract of the meta-analysis :

Teacher–student relationships (TSRs) play a vital role in establishing a positive classroom climate and promoting positive student outcomes. Several meta-analyses have suggested significant correlations between positive TSRs and, for example, academic achievement, motivation, executive functions, and well-being, as well as between negative TSRs that result in behavioral problems or bullying. These meta-analyses have differed substantially in TSR–outcome relationships, moderators, and methodological quality, thus complicating the interpretation of these findings. In this preregistered systematic review of meta-analyses plus original second-order meta-analyses (SOMAs), we aimed to (a) synthesize the meta-analytic evidence on relationships between TSRs and student outcomes, (b) map influential moderators of these relationships, and (c) assess the methodological quality of the meta-analyses. We synthesized over 70 years of educational research across 26 meta-analyses encompassing 119 meta-analytic effect sizes based on approximately 2.64 million prekindergarten and K–12 students. We conducted several three-level SOMAs and found that TSRs had similar large significant relationships with eight clusters of student outcomes: academic achievement, academic emotions, appropriate student behavior, behavioral problems, executive functions and self-control, motivation, school belonging and engagement, and well-being. The link with bullying was only marginally significant. Our moderator analyzes suggested a larger TSR–outcome link for middle and high school students. Although more recent meta-analyses fulfilled more methodological quality criteria, these differences were not associated with TSR–outcome relations. These results map the field of TSR research; present their relationships, moderators, and methodological quality in meta-analyses; and show how TSRs are equally important for a wide range of student outcomes and samples.