One in five 15-year-olds in the UK reports that they feel like an outsider at their school, according to the Programme for International Student Assessment (Pisa).

Pisa’s chapter titled “Students’ Sense of Belonging at School and their Relations with Teachers”, published in April as part of its Students’ Well-being report, shows that one-fifth of Maltese, Chilean, British and Russian students either agreed or strongly agreed that they didn’t feel part of their school’s life in 2015.

Impact on test results

The report also shows that, on average across Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries, those who felt the least sense of belonging at school scored 22 fewer points in the Pisa science test than those students who felt most included.

In the Dominican Republic, 40 per cent of students reported that they felt like outsiders at school, while in the United States, 24 per cent of 15-year-olds said that they felt like an outsider - 7 percentage points higher than the average for students in OECD countries.

In Indonesia, only 4 per cent of students reported feeling like they didn’t belong at school.