Sarah Gregory, UK programmes manager at Ark, said she was concerned the programme would assess children on the basis of their emotional skills.
"I'm really against the systematic approach SEAL takes," she said. "I'm concerned that if SEAL is made compulsory children will be assessed not just on academic ability but emotional skills too."
Gregory, who was speaking at last week's Westminster Briefing conference A New Plan for Children and Young People, said she would prefer to see children learn emotional skills through experiences.
Other delegates said they were concerned about teachers' abilities to teach emotional skills to pupils.
Alison Marshall, head of public affairs at Unicef UK, said looking at other countries that performed higher than the UK in terms of children's wellbeing, few had a formal curriculum for emotional skills.
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