PISA 2015 Students’ Well-Being

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Are 15-year-olds students in your country happy?

Schools are not just places where students acquire academic skills; they also help students become more resilient in the
face of adversity, feel more connected with the people around them, and aim higher in their aspirations for their future.
Not least, schools are the first place where children experience society in all its facets, and those experiences can have
a profound influence on students’ attitudes and behaviour in life.
PISA is best known for its data on learning outcomes, but it also studies students’ satisfaction with life, their relationships
with peers, teachers and parents, and how they spend their time outside of school. PISA results show that students differ
greatly, both between and within countries, in how satisfied they are with their life, their motivation to achieve, how
anxious they feel about their schoolwork, their expectations for the future, and their perceptions of being bullied at
school or treated unfairly by their teachers. Students in some of the countries that top the PISA league tables in science
and mathematics reported comparatively low satisfaction with life; but Finland, the Netherlands and Switzerland seem
able to combine good learning outcomes with highly satisfied students.
It is tempting to equate low levels of life satisfaction among students in East Asia or elsewhere to long study hours, but the
data show no relationship between the time students spend studying, whether in or outside of school, and their satisfaction
with life. And while educators often argue that anxiety is the natural consequence of testing overload, the frequency of
tests is also unrelated to students’ level of schoolwork-related anxiety.
There are other factors that make a difference to student well-being, and much comes down to teachers, parents and
schools.