Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) involves developing skills in self-awareness, self-management, empathy, self-management, relationship skills, responsibility, and psychological resilience. The Sambhavya-SEL Program targets enhancing such skills in middle school students. This study aims to evaluate its impact over a one-year period. This study used a repeated-measures design with 735 middle school students (ages 11 - 14) from private schools in Kathmandu. A custom 12-item Likert scale assessed six SEL dimensions. The Wilcoxon Signed-Rank Test analyzed changes, while tool reliability and convergent validity were evaluated using Guttman’s λ2 and Spearman’s rank correlation coefficient, respectively. Male had significantly higher levels in three SEL component in pretest results while in posttest this increased to five components. Posttest scores showed significant improvements across all SEL dimensions, including self-awareness (p < 0.001), empathy (p = 0.001), self-management (p < 0.001), relationship skills (p = 0.016), responsibility (p = 0.007), psychological resilience (p = 0.012), and overall SEL (p < 0.001), with modest to moderate effect sizes. Tool reliability increased from λ2 = 0.72 (pretest) to λ2 = 0.78 (posttest). Convergent validity, assessed using Spearman’s rank correlation coefficient, ranged from ρ = 0.53 (p < 0.001) to ρ = 0.66 (p < 0.001) pretest and ρ = 0.59 (p < 0.001) to ρ = 0.70 (p < 0.001) posttest, indicating strong validity. This study highlights the SEL program’s positive effects on middle school students’ social-emotional skills, emphasizing the need for educators and policymakers to integrate SEL into curricula for enhanced mental health support.
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