Yesterday we visited a rural elementary school and observed teachers delivering the PATHS programme (Promoting Alternative THinking Strategies). PATHS was designed by a team at Penn State University to help children behave more prosocially and learn to deal with situations of conflict by recognising their own emotions and the emotions of those around them.

We observed two lessons in the classroom and we took our own lesson away with us: if PATHS and other programmes are to be delivered with fidelity then high quality support for the staff involved in delivery is vital.

We were familiar with the programme already. We had read about it and listened to the developer of PATHS, Mark Greenberg, talk about it. We knew some of the things to look out for, and we noticed when they happened and when they didn’t.

Both lessons were fast-paced and fun. The children enjoyed them, and they seemed to get the messages: how to deal with feeling left out of games, and what it means to feel happy.

But we were surprised on our visit not to see the traffic light posters that encourage children to stop and think before acting; schools are encouraged to display these prominently everywhere, including the headteacher’s office.

We were taken aback, too, that the two teachers we spoke with only delivered one 15-minute session a week owing to other curriculum pressures; the recommended weekly dose is about 60 minutes delivered in, say, three 20-minute slots.

And we were slightly alarmed when a teacher referred to negative feelings on a chart as ‘bad’ feelings; pupils should be taught that ‘it is OK’ to feel sad, mad, upset and so on.

For 10 years teachers at the school had received intensive support from a coach (our chaperone as it happened) in implementing PATHS. This had come to an end two years previously with, it would seem, predictable results: the programme had started to drift.

Researchers from our host organisation, the Prevention Research Center at Penn State University, argue that programme drift is the default. They describe it as ‘reactive adaptation’ of the model.

Interestingly, they are enthusiastic about ‘planned adaptation’, in other words maintaining the underlying logic model while modifying elements to fit the local context. For instance, PATHS includes reference to biographies of famous US citizens past and present to illustrate positive traits like perseverance. Abraham Lincoln won’t mean a great deal to a child in Belfast or Birmingham, so we need to find alternative examples.

Eight of the 10 programmes listed on the ‘Blueprints’ website of proven models have been implemented in the UK, but only one with fidelity (MST – Multi-systemic Therapy) and this was sponsored by philanthropy not government. An obvious explanation for this is that the notion of technical assistance is virtually unheard of the other side of the Atlantic. Its practice is even more rare.

‘TA’, as it is known in the trade, typically involves a mixture of inputs, including one-to-one mentoring for the teacher (or other professional), opportunities for reflection on practice individually or in groups, booster training to supplement initial training and feeding research findings back to staff as they emerge.

As we drove back through the Pennsylvania snow, I reflected on the enormous resource it must have taken to have a highly qualified professional visit rural schools like this one over 10 years to help teachers implement PATHS and how I couldn’t imagine it in the UK. And then I reminded myself that, implemented well, this programme achieves far-reaching benefits for children’s social and emotional well-being, and told myself that we need not only to imagine it but to make it the norm.