Welsh teenagers under pressure citing worry, anxiety and stress
The global Pisa study of education systems around the world has released a wealth of information about the wellbeing of young people in different countries. Abbie Wightwick looks into the statistics for Wales...
There is much more to the Pisa study of world schools systems compiled by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) than just ranking countries on their standards.
The organisation has just released a new tranche of data based on the responses of the 3,500 15-year-olds who took the test in Wales to questions about their wellbeing.
It asked about bullying, exam pressure, life at home and anxiety – and it has compared those results to schools systems around the world.
And the results paint a fascinating picture of how life for teenagers in Wales compares to their peers’ across the globe.
Bullying is perhaps the most worrying of all the findings.
The study shows that a quarter of the teenagers who took part in Wales experience bullying at least once a month – far more than in other nations including the US, Germany and Latvia.
The report shows bullying is 4% more prevalent in Wales on average than in other OECD nations.
In Wales 15% of students reported being frequently (at least a few times per month) made fun of and 11.5% say they are frequently left out of things compared to 7% elsewhere.
Pupils here are also more likely to be the object of nasty rumours at school, with 12.7% saying this happened at least once month, compared to the OECD average of 8%.
Across the world roughly one pupil per class (4%) reported that they are hit or pushed at least a few times per month at school, a percentage that varies from 1% to 9.5% across countries with Wales at 6.1%.
And our pupils are less satisfied with life than others around the globe.
Teenagers in Wales also had lower levels of life satisfaction.
On a scale of one to 10 Welsh pupils had an average life satisfaction rate of 7.14, better than the British average of 6.98, but just short of the OECD average of 7.31.
This puts Wales behind nations such as France (7.63), Germany (7.35), Spain (7.42) Latvia (7.37) and the US (7.36), but ahead of others such as Japan (6.80) Turkey (6.12) and Korea (6.36).
Welsh teenagers also worry more about tests and grades more than those in the other 72 OECD countries, the data shows.
More than seven in 10 15-yearolds in Wales (71.6%) said they feel “very anxious” about school tests even if they are well prepared – compared to an average 55%.
And more than half of Welsh 15-year-olds (54.8%) report getting very tense studying, compared to the OECD average of 37%.
Nearly seven in 10 worry about poor grades, while 94.4% want top grades in most of their courses and nearly seven in 10 want to be top of the class.
In all countries, girls reported greater schoolwork-related anxiety than boys, which could negatively impact on their performance, the report warns.
As well as being stressed by tests, more than seven in 10 pupils said they feel like outsiders at school and nearly eight in 10 feel awkward and out of place there.
Feelings about school show a contradictory picture. Although more than 78.3% said they make friends easily at school, only 66.4% feel a sense of belonging there, and while 87.6% say they feel lonely at school 86% say other students seem to like them.
If school is stressful most of the teenagers in Wales report support at home, with 95% talking to their parents after classes, 92% saying their parents are interested in what they do and 91% getting help from home if they get into difficulty at school.
This is likely to be helping their school results and happiness. In his introduction to the report Pisa head Andreas Schleicher says: “Spending time just talking” is the parental activity most frequently and most strongly associated with students’ life satisfaction.
And it seems to matter for performance too. Students whose parents reported “spending time just talking” were two-thirds of a school year ahead in science learning, and even after accounting for socio-economic status, the advantage remains at one-third of a school year.
He adds “Perhaps the most distressing threat to students’ wellbeing is bullying”, and says schools must do more to tackle it.
On health Welsh 15-year-olds are less likely to engage in moderate activity or eat breakfast before school and spend more time on the internet than peers around the UK and in many other OECD nations.
Fewer than seven in 10 eat breakfast before school, 7.8% are not involved in even moderate activity, and on average our 15-year-olds spend more than three hours on the internet outside school on weekdays.
That’s the highest internet rate use for the UK and ahead of countries including Belgium, Spain, Canada, Portugal, Italy and Colombia.
It is still half the rate for what Pisa calls “extreme” internet use of six hours or more a day. That, says Mr Schleicher, seriously impacts on wellbeing and results: “Extreme Internet use – more than six hours per day – has a negative relationship with students’ life satisfaction and engagement at school.”
Findings from the Pisa wellbeing survey show that teachers, schools and parents can make a real difference to pupils’ social and psychological needs as well as helping them develop resilience and a sense of control for their future lives, he adds.
The findings come from answers on wellbeing and happiness given by 15-year-olds around the world who took the OECD’s latest Programme for International Student Assessment (Pisa) published in December 2016, including 3,500 in Wales.