“Be confident”
It is probably one of the most useless pieces of advice we give young people. We tell students to speak louder, raise their hands, present without shaking, ask questions without worrying about being wrong and walk into unfamiliar rooms as though they have never doubted themselves. But confidence is not something a teacher can simply explain on a blackboard. There is no formula for it, no chapter to revise and certainly no examination that can measure whether you have finally found it. So where does confidence actually come from? Is it something schools can teach, or is it something we only learn when life forces us to experience it?
What Confidence Actually Is -
Ask most people to describe a confident student and a surprisingly predictable image appears: someone who raises their hand without hesitation, speaks loudly, volunteers for presentations and seems completely comfortable being watched. Somewhere along the way, we have turned confidence into a performance. The louder you are, the more confident you must be. The more comfortable you look on a stage, the less afraid you must be. But I don't think confidence is that simple.
I have fallen into that way of thinking myself. In Grade 8, I became much more conscious of being judged by my friends. It wasn't that I suddenly stopped believing in myself; I simply became more aware of how I was being perceived, and that sometimes changed how willing I was to express myself. As I grew older, became more comfortable with myself and found friendships where I felt I could actually be myself, that changed. Looking back, what changed wasn't who I was. It was how comfortable I felt being that person around other people.
That distinction matters because confidence is often treated as though it is an on-or-off switch. You either have it or you don't. Yet real life is much messier. You can be confident in your ideas but nervous about presenting them. You can be comfortable with your closest friends but quiet in a new group. You can know that you are capable and still hesitate when you know everyone is watching.
For me, confidence is not the absence of nerves or doubt. It is knowing that making a mistake doesn't make me incapable, that embarrassment doesn't define me and that somebody else's opinion doesn't automatically become my opinion of myself. Maybe, then, confidence isn't about being fearless. Maybe it is about knowing that you can handle being afraid.
Confidence Changes With Context -
This becomes especially important in school because we tend to measure the confidence we can see. The student who immediately volunteers gets noticed. The student who leads the group project gets remembered. The student who can stand in front of thirty people and speak without shaking looks confident. But what about the student who has a brilliant idea and needs a few minutes before saying it? What about someone who can defend their opinion passionately with friends but freezes during a formal presentation? Or someone who is quiet in class but completely takes charge on a football field, in an art studio or while helping a friend? We wouldn't call someone unintelligent because they struggle with one subject. So why do we treat confidence as one universal ability?
UNICEF's work on adolescent life skills makes a similar distinction. Its programmes identify skills such as communication, decision-making, problem-solving, self-worth and confidence as things young people develop through practice and experience, rather than simply being told about them. That feels much closer to how confidence actually works. You don't become confident because somebody tells you to "believe in yourself." You become more confident when you repeatedly experience yourself doing something difficult and realising that you can handle it.
Adolescence makes this even more complicated. School is one of the places where we are constantly being seen by other people. Friends notice what we say. Classmates notice when we get an answer wrong. Teachers notice whether we participate. We notice who seems more articulate, popular or comfortable in their own skin, and comparison becomes part of the atmosphere without anybody deliberately creating it. My own experience in Grade 8 was a small version of this: my confidence hadn't disappeared, my awareness of other people's opinions had simply become louder.
That is why telling a student to "just be confident" can be almost useless. Sometimes the problem isn't that they don't believe in themselves. Sometimes they don't yet feel safe enough to show what they believe.
So, Can Schools Teach Confidence? -
Not exactly. A teacher cannot write "confidence" on the board, explain it for forty minutes and expect everyone to leave the classroom with more of it. There is no formula for confidence and no exam question worth ten marks for "excellent self-belief."
But saying schools cannot directly teach confidence doesn't mean schools have nothing to do with it. UNICEF India reported in 2024 that its self-esteem education work had already reached more than 7 million students, with a new partnership aiming to reach 16.4 million young people in India. The scale of that work reflects something important: confidence and self-esteem are not irrelevant extras in education. They are recognised as skills that can be deliberately supported.
There is a catch, though. Schools can create opportunities for confidence. They cannot guarantee what every student will do with those opportunities. A presentation can teach one student that they are capable of speaking to a room full of people. For another, it might simply be the first uncomfortable step before they eventually become comfortable. A leadership role might make one student realise they are good at organising people, while another might discover that their confidence comes from writing, designing, debating, sport or helping others.
The experience matters because confidence needs evidence. It is difficult to genuinely believe "I can handle this" if you have never been given the chance to find out.
Confidence Is Built Through Experience -
Schools cannot hand students confidence. They can give them experiences from which confidence grows. Every time a student answers a question despite being unsure, they collect a tiny piece of evidence that uncertainty is survivable. Every time they give a presentation and realise it wasn't as terrifying as they imagined, they learn something. Every time they disagree respectfully, make a mistake and recover, lead a team or try something they are not immediately good at, they are building a relationship with failure that is far healthier than simply being told not to fear it.
This is why confidence can sometimes appear suddenly. We assume someone "became confident," when really they have spent months or years accumulating small experiences that finally changed how they see themselves. Schools are uniquely positioned to provide those experiences. A student doesn't need one enormous opportunity to transform them. They need repeated, meaningful chances to participate: to speak, create, lead, fail, rethink, try again and sometimes simply be listened to.
UNESCO's work on meaningful student participation makes this distinction particularly important. Student voice is not meaningful simply because students are allowed to speak; they need genuine opportunities to influence decisions and participate in their education. In other words, confidence grows differently when students feel that what they say can actually matter, a very different idea from forcing every student to "speak up more."
But Experience Needs the Right Environment -
Not all experiences build confidence. If a student gives an incorrect answer and the class laughs, that is an experience too. If someone shares an idea and is immediately dismissed, that is an experience. If students constantly feel compared, judged or embarrassed, they may learn something completely different: that being visible is dangerous.
This is where the environment around students matters as much as the opportunities themselves. WHO's 2024 international study of 279,117 adolescents across 44 countries and regions found that only 68% reported high levels of family support, down from 73% in 2018, alongside rising school pressure among older girls in particular. Confidence doesn't develop in a vacuum: it develops inside whatever emotional climate a school and a home create, and that climate is measurably shifting.
So perhaps the goal shouldn't be to create classrooms where everyone is constantly pushed out of their comfort zone. It should be to create classrooms where students feel safe enough to gradually expand it.
A confident school isn't one where every hand is raised. It is one where a student can raise their hand without being terrified of getting the answer wrong. Where disagreement doesn't automatically become conflict. Where leadership isn't reserved for the loudest person. Where quiet students aren't treated as problems that need fixing. And where mistakes are treated as part of learning rather than evidence that someone doesn't belong.
What Schools Can Actually Do -
So, can schools teach confidence? I think the honest answer is no; but they can help students build it. They can teach communication, public speaking, collaboration and decision-making. They can give students leadership opportunities, creative freedom and chances to make real decisions. They can create spaces where mistakes aren't humiliating and where students are taken seriously.
But the confidence itself comes from somewhere deeper: experience. It comes from the moment you realise that you answered even though you were nervous. That you survived the awkward presentation. That you disagreed with someone and they still respected you. That you failed at something and tried again. That you walked into a room feeling unsure and walked out knowing a little more about what you were capable of.
That may be why confidence looks so different from person to person. Schools don't need to make every student loud. They don't need to turn every quiet person into a performer or every nervous student into a natural leader. They need to give students enough opportunities to discover what they are capable of, and enough safety to actually try. Because confidence isn't something a teacher can simply teach you. Sometimes, you have to experience yourself becoming the person you were told you could be.
Conclusion
Confidence, then, isn't a subject schools can add to the timetable. It's a byproduct of everything else they choose to do: how they respond to a wrong answer, whether they make room for a hesitant idea, whether trying counts for something even when it doesn't succeed.
What schools can offer isn't confidence itself, but the raw material for it: enough small, safe risks that a student eventually stops needing permission to take them.
Maybe that's the more honest goal. Not a school full of confident students, but a school where every student has had enough chances to find out what they're capable of; and enough people around them who made that discovery feel possible.
Because in the end, confidence was never something waiting to be taught. It was something waiting to be tried.