Children unhappier after they start secondary school

CHILDREN’S happiness declines when they start secondary school, a University of Cambridge study has found.

Data from more than 11,000 young people showed the drop in wellbeing was universal and that children from all backgrounds, ethnicities and locations feel worse aged 14 than they do aged 11, with the change in school thought to be the driving factor.

Scientists asked children to rank on a scale of one to seven how satisfied they were with their schoolwork, appearance, school, family, friends and life as a whole. One was “completely happy” and seven was “completely unhappy”.

Meanwhile, the children used a one to four scale for self-esteem and had to say whether they “strongly agree”, “agree”, “disagree” or “strongly disagree” with various statements.

Statisticians crunched the numbers down to a scale between -2 and 1, with the average happiness being a score of zero when a child was 11 years old.

However, by the time children were 14, four in five had a score of below zero. That decline is probably linked to the transition to secondary school at age 11, according to the study’s authors.

The research is published in the British Journal of Developmental Psychology.