Does the teacher-student relationship matter? Socio-emotional competence and self-reported academic achievement in Chinese primary schools

Grounded in Social Cognitive Theory, this study examines the associations between socio-emotional competence and self-reported academic achievement among Grade 4 and Grade 5 students in public primary schools in Yunnan Province, China. Specifically, it investigates four dimensions of socio-emotional competence: self-management, social awareness, prosocial behavior, and learning attitude. It also examines whether the teacher-student relationship functions as an indirect pathway between socio-emotional competence and self-reported academic achievement. A cross-sectional quantitative design was adopted, and data were collected from 314 primary school students. Structural equation modeling was used to test the proposed relationships. The findings show that social awareness and prosocial behavior were positively associated with self-reported academic achievement, whereas self-management was not statistically significant. Learning attitude showed a statistically significant but unexpected negative association, suggesting the need for further investigation in high-pressure educational contexts. The teacher-student relationship did not function as a statistically significant indirect pathway between socio-emotional competence and self-reported academic achievement (z = 1.13, p = 0.249). These findings provide preliminary evidence that specific dimensions of socio-emotional competence may relate differently to academic outcomes in Chinese primary education. However, the results should be interpreted cautiously because of the cross-sectional design, reliance on self-reported academic achievement, partial model fit, and discriminant validity concerns among several constructs. The study contributes to context-sensitive discussions of socio-emotional competence in non-Western primary education settings and highlights the need for culturally grounded approaches to socio-emotional development in Chinese schools.