British schoolchildren are unhappier than children in Ethiopia and Algeria because they are bullied, left out by their peers and under pressure to look good, a ten-year study has found.
English children ranked 14th out of 15 countries for overall life satisfaction, just ahead of South Korea, and scored low for aspects related to their “self” and school, according to the University of York research.
Researchers, commissioned by The Children’s Society charity, said children were partly unhappy as a result of being bullied or feeling left out.
Levels of unhappiness at school were higher among teenagers, with 43 per cent of year eights saying they enjoyed school, compared to 61 per cent of year six students.
More than a third of English students aged 10 and 12 reported being physically bullied in the last month, and half had felt excluded at school.
So, the leftist education bureaucracy has been charge of all of this for the past 70 years. It is, therefore, their fault.
As the Wise Man said, what you do unto the little children is what you do to me, and it would be better for you to have a millstone around your neck and be thrown into the ocean. But I’m merciful myself, I suggest we just rise up and slaughter them all.
I suppose the bullying of the teachers constantly checking their packed lunches for forbidden sweets & fizzy drinks wasn’t a factor?
I think it’s a problem of unrealistic expectations: UK children get raised being told that they’re all special flowers and UK teachers are expected to be entertainer/social workers. Third world children probably find school and chalk and talk teachers a pleasant interlude which may enhance their chances of survival.
Tim:”But I’m merciful myself, I suggest we just rise up and slaughter them all.”
Herod tried that and it didn’t work.
Any” left-wing educational bureaucracy” was terminated with extreme prejudice twenty years ago, if it ever existed then. Are you saying that the public schools with their life-changing bullying, homosexuality and paedophilia are the product of left-wing ideology? The whole drift of Conservative Party policy has been to free State schools to live in a state of classical laissez- faire anarchy, so, as so often, you are being faced with the consequences of your own stupid ideas.I don’t think its left-wing pressure that makes children worried about body image.
Yup, the only way to make school attractive is to make home life even worse.
They could always claim asylum in Algeria or Ethiopia.
Indeed. I recall some USA politician was being hectored over the claim that “there is more inequality here than North Korea”, The response ; “why don’t you go and live there then ?”
Ljh is right ; in short, it’s because they are pathetic self obsessed whiners.
I recommend some sort of exchange program, our kids go and live in Ethiopia for a few months. I expect we would soon rise up this risible ‘table’.
DBC Reed
The bureaucracy you refer to (I presume) is the LEAs which were indeed reduced in scope significantly (a policy continued under Blair/Brown I would add) but if you are saying Left wing control of the education system is over you need to speak to the education profession or see an NUT/NASUWT conference. The Hard Left still has complete control of the state education sector, and in terms of numbers the Public School sector is miniscule. Not sure why Laissez faire ideology would set the zeitgeist but I’ll leave you to elaborate…..
I wouldn’t like going to school either if I had a PlayStation at home.
The kids in Ethiopia like school: it’s better than being set to work in the fields. The kids in Britain and South Korea hate school because the alternative is being at home with their video games.
I have had quite enough working in State Education thank you very much and never saw any of this Hard Left influence that you seem to think so pervasive. Chance would have been a fine thing. The big political divide was in my day between those who believed that work in the classroom should be rewarded and those who hankered after better paying jobs with “extra-curricular” responsibilities. The NAS and NUT divided on these lines. Malcontents and rebels were basically anti-bureaucrat but counted very few right wingers amongst their numbers.. Funny that: a lot of right wingers ended up as head teachers sitting in offices on high pay .You would have thought their principles would have made this intolerable.
“and never saw any of this Hard Left influence that you seem to think so pervasive”
That partially reminds me of a couple of left wing friends who, years ago, used to insist that the BBC was balanced!
My own albeit anecdotal evidence wrt education is completely the opposite. One particular memory stands out – a small party / gathering of about a dozen of us. I was the only person there not from the state education sector (mainly teachers of one sort or another). Apart from the host (and yes, she was a college principal!), one discussion amongst us made it evidently clear that I was also the only one who wasn’t substantially left of centre. The anti-Thatcher ‘perspective’ in particular was quite revealing.
@ DBC Reed
“Funny that: a lot of right wingers ended up as head teachers sitting in offices on high pay .You would have thought their principles would have made this intolerable.”
It did: he stood for Parliament! And won.
Are you claiming there was another right-wing headmaster?
@ DBC Reed
In all your years did you never see a breach of the Education Act that mandated Religious Education? Thirty-odd years ago the CoE schools in London received so many applications from Muslims who wanted their children to be educated by Christians rather than the militant atheists who dominated ILEA* that the London Area Synod scheduled a major debate on the issue: I was relieved that the virtually unanimous view was that we should not turn them away
*the higher quality of education at CoE schools was not the issue because the much higher funding given to ILEA schools substantially offset the higher quality of teachers at CoE schools who had to struggle with Victorian buildings
@J77
No I did not, though I spent a lot of time in Further Education, which was taken completely out of LEA ownership and incorporated ( privatised) and all the millions of pounds worth of buildings and assets given to the work/shy: lecture/shy bureaucrats who were the (caretaker) management. The results were immediate and catastrophic.
I did not know that Religious Education teaching was mandatory in Schools: I just thought a daily religious observance was . In the case of Muslims attending LEA schools, I would have thought exposure to atheism would have been no bad thing, in fact educational, the way things have turned out.Although I am a Christian for entirely political reasons of equality etc., religion should not be in schools as the teaching methods are incompatible with free enquiry.
Be quite clear :state schools were never dominated by the Hard Left.This is a figment of the right-wing imagination along with “1984” and all that Etonian bollocks.(And now we have a government of genuine Etonian thickies; isn’t that progress?)
@ DBC Reed
You worked in Education and you did not know the Education Act?!?
Then you say you did not see any breach of the Education Act – how do you know that if you didn’t know what it said?
You classify a guy who won an Exhibition to Oxford and got a first-class degree and one from *St Paul’s* who won a scholarship as a “genuine Eton thickies”. Or maybe you think Theresa May went to a boys’ school?
You are showing yourself up as ignorant and bile-ridden.
As I said, I spent most of my time in FE where Religious Studies and a religious observance weren’t compulsory, thank goodness .
As to the larger questions you always shy away from: trying to accommodate the religious prejudices of Muslims in State Education became an issue in the 80’s with Bradford Head Ray Honeyford who “caused trouble” when Muslim parents insisted on their primary school daughters doing school swimming lessons in pyjamas etc.He eventually lost his job to the forces of multiculturalism -a soft-left/liberal cop-out (which you appear to go along with in approving of Christian schools sheltering Muslim hardliners ).Had schools been dominated by militant atheists as you fantasise,(when the mood takes you), there would have been none of this nonsense with irrational fundamentalism, Christian or Muslim.
The absence of social class and religious pressure in FE was liberating in my experience: I do not assume that because Cameron and Osborne went to dysfunctional (because of homosexuality and paedophilia) schools they must somehow be intelligent, though not as thick as Thatcher who was more uninformed about more areas of the field of knowledge than any politician in living memory.
Re Rhodes Boyson another of your heroes.Ever heard of Gilberson?
Correction: Gilberthorpe