The 21st century should be a better time than ever for children to grow up healthy and happy. The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989) has provided a mechanism for the inclusion and recognition of children's rights in various contexts, such as homes, communities and schools.

Children are now more protected from abuse and approaches based on physical coercion, fear and punishment, and their voices are gradually being listened to and taken into consideration in systems such as homes and schools.

The rapid changes taking place in the adult world today, however, means children are also being exposed to pressures and stress they are ill-equipped to deal with.

In their book A Good Childhood (2009) Richard Layard and Judy Dunn argue that children in western cultures today live in a world marked by individualism, family breakups, violence, rampant competition, excessive consumerism, and increasing inequality.

They are increasingly exposed to commercial pressures, violence, stress at school, emotional distress in their personal lives, peer pressure and bullying, and relative isolation from adults in full pursuit of individual achievement and success. They are being robbed of their innocence, happiness and the fun of childhood.

As one of the major systems in children's development, education needs to be cognisant of, and resonate with, these current realities and challenges for it to remain valid and relevant to the lives of children and young people in the 21st century.

There have been consistent calls in the past decades for a more humanistic, holistic and emotional approach to educational practices informed by a developing understanding of the ways in which social, cognitive and emotional factors interact and contribute to the learning process.

Schools are being called to go beyond simplistic performance indicators and become more engaged in the challenges faced by children and young people today, helping in the formation of academically, socially and emotionally literate young people.

Questions have been raised about the value and effectiveness of an educational system that has become out of line with the realities and challenges of the 21st century.

As the veteran American educationalist Nel Noddings put it: "The traditional organisation of schooling is intellectually and morally inadequate for contemporary society. We live in an age troubled by social problems that force us to reconsider what we do in schools."

Pushing academic learning at the expense of social and emotional learning is in clear conflict with our National Minimum Curriculum: "Holistic education acknowledges the interdependence of psychomotor, intellectual, affective, social and cultural learning. The educational community would be selling students short if it privileged one of these aspects of the learning process at the expense of others."

When they leave school, students will need to have learned the requisite academic and scientific skills to enable them to function as self-reliant citizens and to gain access to opportunities and resources. They also need, however, to be equipped with the skills to adapt to continuous change, to be creative in problem-solving and effective in decision-making, to build and maintain healthy and supportive relationships, to work collaboratively with others, to mobilise their resources in times of difficulty.

Seen in this way, an educational system with an exclusive focus on academic performance is short-changing today's children and young people, and denying them a basic right for a holistic and relevant education as a preparation for the world outside school.

The shift towards this broader educational agenda has also been highlighted by the realisation that the exclusive focus on academic learning has been creating undue stress and anxiety among children and young people with a negative impact on their healthy development. The pervasive culture of academic performance and examinations with continuous academic pressure on children by both teachers and parents, underlying fear of failure in selective examinations at a critical period in children's development, and long hours of study and homework with little time for play and relaxation, have become a health hazard for many children.

Some may argue that the present system has indeed worked for many thousands of young people who are leaving school equipped with the requisite knowledge, skills and certificates to enable them to further their studies and careers. Even if such an assertion were true the present system is leaving too many children and young people by the wayside, either disengaged and alienated on one side, or overstressed and anxious on the other.

Some educationalists may fear the focus on social and emotional learning may rob children of precious academic learning time and detract from their achievement. On a broader level, one may also argue that such an approach may in some way reduce the country's economic productivity and competiveness.

Academic and socio-emotional literacy, however, are not mutually exclusive or developed at the expense of one another. Indeed they can support, reinforce and complement one another. Recent research in neuroscience has underlined the influence of emotions on cognition and their key role in learning.

In the absence of emotional competence, people are prone to instinctive responses, particularly fear, which lead to an overemphasis of basic defensive or aggressive responses. The integration of thoughts and emotions in education facilitates and optimises the learning process. Educational practices that encourage feelings of emotional security and the development of high self-esteem based on trusting and supportive relationships promote students' confidence and autonomy, essential qualities for healthy personal development.

As eminent British economist Richard Layard argues, these qualities are also necessary attributes for economic viability in the 21st century. Happy and socially competent people are, in the end, more productive in society.

Moreover, an integrated, holistic education does not only benefit the individual himself or herself, but society as a whole. Skills such as empathy, solidarity, tolerance, collaboration, constructive conflict resolution, and emotional regulation will help to create more harmonious and supportive communities.

Clearly, we need to broaden the present agenda in education and assign social and emotional learning the value it deserves in the 21st century.

To continue privileging a narrow range of cognitive skills at the expense of a more useful and meaningful education, would be to continue to provide our children with an inadequate preparation for the world outside school. Social and emotional learning needs to be viewed as a core competence in our schools, like literacy, mathematics and e-learning.

It needs to become a key area of the curriculum, both as a core subject in its own right and also as a medium which facilitates the learning of the other areas of the curriculum. Education would thus serve as a priceless resource to young people struggling to establish themselves in the adult world, equipping them with the skills, abilities and resilience necessary to thrive in the uncertain but fast-moving environmental and economic present and future.

Dr Cefai is the author of Promoting Resilience in the Classroom (2008) and Promoting Emotional Education (2009, with Paul Cooper).

Dr Cefai is director of the European Centre for Educational Resilience and Socio-Emotional Health at the University of Malta.