#69. UK School “Reform” Led to Declines in School Satisfaction and Mental Wellbeing

The US is not the only nation where government mandated curriculum and testing led to declining mental wellbeing among students.

Vectorportal/CC...

Dear friends,

Surveys in the United States and other countries routinely reveal that the single most prevalent source of psychological distress—and hence of anxiety and depression—among school-aged children, especially teens, is school pressure. This should not be surprising. Children spend more time in school than anywhere else except home, and while at school they have very little opportunity to make their own choices and are continuously evaluated for their performance in comparison to other students. Moreover, many students in recent times have been led to believe (falsely I have argued) that school performance is the primary determinant of future success. When nations adopt strict school policies that reduce the choices that teachers and students can make and increase the weight of one-size-fits-all tests, student suffering increases.

The most harmful changes in school policy, in recent times, derive from national mandates for standardized tests used not just to evaluate students’ performance but also to evaluate teachers and whole schools and school districts. With such mandates, schools that do not show increased test scores from year to year may be judged as failing, and teachers whose students’ scores do not improve may be judged as incompetent. This has led to changes in school policies that result in more focus on drill in the subjects of the tests and less focus on or even dropping of subjects (such as music and art) that are more enjoyable to many students but are not targeted for standardized tests. In such conditions, it becomes harder for teachers to vary their curriculum to engage students’ intellects and creativity. School becomes less fun and more stressful for everyone.

In Letter D5, over a year ago, and more recently in Letter #51, I summarized multiple lines of evidence that the adoption of the Common Core Curriculum and new high-stakes exams, beginning in 2011 and 2012, led to a sharp rise in anxiety, depression, and suicide among teens in the United States, reversing a gradual decline in such suffering that had begun around 1990. It also led many of the best teachers to resign. I now have accumulated even more evidence supporting these assertions about effects of Common Core, which I will present in a future letter.

But now, in this letter and the next, I aim to show that increased suffering resulting from national schooling mandates is not unique to the United States. Here I will describe what happened when the UK instituted changes comparable to U.S. Common Core, and in the next letter I’ll describe what happened when Sweden did much the same thing.

Nature of the UK School “Reform” of 2015-2017 and Reactions of Students, Parents, and Teachers

In 2014, under the leadership of Michael Gove who was the UK education secretary at the time, the UK government mandated changes in The National Curriculum for UK Schools. The changes for secondary schools included more required courses, fewer optional courses, much greater use of government-prescribed end-of-year testing to assess student performance, and use of student test scores also to evaluate teachers. These changes started to take effect in 2015 and were in full force beginning in the 2017-2018 school year.

Some reactions from those affected, near the end of the first full year of “reform”

Reports from students, teachers, and parents make it clear that these changes increased students’ distress. To illustrate, here is a sample of quotations from those affected, collected and published by the popular UK tabloid The Daily Mail, in June of 2018, near the end of the first full school year after the reforms took place:

From students

“I don't think I've ever cried so much about school ‘till A-levels!! Stressed is not even the word; someone put me out of my misery.” [Note: A-levels here refers to the exams given in the final two years of UK secondary schooling.]

“Guys, I’m panicking. I’m having an academic breakdown. I am exhausted to the point of no return. … I am absolutely not OK.”

“Exams really aren’t fair at all. I’m stressed and anxious constantly and then I get home so depressed about my other exams, go to bed and just lay there. It’s [expletive deleted] torture.”

From parents

“Michael Gove should be made to sit the exams himself. Some have 22 exams and more. It's absolutely ludicrous.”

“Big week for son number 2 with lots of A-level exams. It seems wrong that 2 years of hard work … hangs in the balance perhaps on one dodgy question on one paper. So much stress caused by the system, and not by him not doing enough work,”

“'Tonight my beautiful, bright 16-year-old daughter cried so hard in fear of her GCSE maths paper & English lit paper!” [Note GCSE refers to the first two years of high school.]

“The pressure students are put under is disgusting.”

From an English teacher

“I have to run two extra one-hour lessons a week at 7:45 am. It’s not a refresher or revision class; it’s because we haven’t got through the new syllabus. In GCSE English it’s all exams…. They effectively have to memorize three texts and 18 poems. the expectation is killing them.”

Surveys of educators about the “reforms”

In a survey conducted in the summer of 2016, after the new curriculum was partly but not fully in effect, 75% of teachers reported that students had a reduced number of GCSE subjects to choose from in their schools (Neumann et al., 2017). They reported that students were increasingly forced to take subjects for which they were not motivated and were denied subjects that interested them more. In the same survey, 76% of teachers of English and mathematics, the subjects most affected by the first wave of the new GCSE requirements, “strongly agreed” that their classroom practice had become more focused on examinations and exam-prep because of the mandated changes. Respondents also generally agreed that high-stakes tests had negatively affected the mental health of both teachers and students.

In a more recent survey, conducted in June 2024, by the UK Association of School and College Leaders (2024), Year-11 teachers were asked: “Thinking of your Year-11 students who just took their exams, which of the following things happened this academic year?” The most frequent response—checked by 77% of teachers—was “Mental health issues related to exam anxiety.” In another survey of teachers, conducted in 2019, 73% reported that the new system of GCSE assessment had caused student mental health to worsen (Stubbs, 2022).

Survey Evidence of Increased School Pressure and Decreased Life Satisfaction

Systematic surveys have revealed that onset of the just-described UK school “reforms” was followed by significant increases in school pressure and school dissatisfaction and declines in psychological wellbeing among UK school-aged teens. Here is a list of some of the survey results:

• The World Health Organization conducts an international survey—the Health Behavior in School-Aged Children Study—every four years. An analysis of the responses from 15-year-olds from 32 mostly European countries revealed a large decline in school satisfaction and increase in school pressure among UK students between 2014 and 2018 (Lofstedt et al, 2020). More specifically, the percentage of UK 15-year-olds who reported “high satisfaction with school” declined from 19.3% in 2014 to 11.1%. In other words, in the interval between the last year before the school reform and the end of the first full year after the reform, the percentage of 15-year-olds who said they were highly satisfied with school was cut nearly in half. The same study revealed that in 2018, but not before, the UK ranked dead last, out of the 32 countries, in the percentage of students who expressed satisfaction with their schooling. The surveys also revealed that the percentage of UK 15-year-olds who reported feeling pressured by their schoolwork “a lot” increased from 25% in 2014 to 40% 2018 (Stubbs, 2022).

• An analysis of data for 15-year-olds, collected in 2018 by the OECD Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), revealed that UK students reported greater fear of failure and a lower average level of life satisfaction than did students in any of the other 24 European countries included (Children’s Society, 2023). This study also revealed that, across countries, declining life satisfaction was more strongly correlated with a low sense of belonging at school than with any other variable assessed (Marquez et al, 2022).

• In a 2019 survey of UK children and young adults under age 25 who had sought mental health support, the most common response to a question about significant sources of their distress was “pressure to do well in school or college,” checked by 77% of the respondents (YoungMinds, 2019).

Final Thoughts

If education policy makers would step back from their obsessive, misguided belief that education can be measured quantitatively and that such measurement somehow improves education, I think they would easily see the error of their ways. Indeed, there is ample evidence that the more we restrict the options of students and teachers in school, and the more we judge them based on standardized tests, the less intellectually engaged and creative they become. Stress suppressive creative thought, and the narrowing of curriculum around the tested subjects leads to excessive focus on a very narrow slice of knowledge and ideas, a slice that often has little to do with real-world relevance. So, the “reforms” lead not only to decreased mental wellbeing but also to poorer education for the great majority of students. I will present evidence for that in a future post.

And now, what do you think about all this? This Substack is, in part, a forum for discussion. Your thoughts and questions are valued and treated respectfully by me and other readers, regardless of the degree to which we agree or disagree. Readers’ thoughtful comments and questions add to the value of these letters for everyone. For this letter I am especially interested in hearing from readers in the UK about your experiences, which either coincide with or run counter to what I have described here.

Remainder for paid subscribers and those who might become that: On March 22 I will host a Zoom meeting for paid subscribers to discuss the challenges of being a trustful parent in today’s world. For more information and to register, see the announcement here.

With respect and best wishes,

Peter

References

Eszter Neumann, Emma Towers, Sharon Gewirtz, Meg Maguire (2017). A Curriculum for All? The effects of recent Key Stage 4 curriculum, assessment and accountability reforms on English secondary education. Available at https://www.researchgate.net/publication/311455824_A_Curriculum_for_All_The_effects_of_recent_key_stage_4_curriculum_assessment_and_accountability_reforms_on_English_secondary_education#fullTextFileContent

Petra Löfstedt, Irene García-Moya, et al. (2020). School satisfaction and school pressure in the WHO European region and North America: an analysis of time trends (2002-2018) and patterns of co-occurrence in 32 countries. Journal of Adolescent Health 66, S59-S69.

Jose Marquez, Joanna Inchley, & Emily Long (2022). Cross-country and gender differences in factors associated with population-level declines in adolescent life satisfaction. Child Indicators Research,15, 1405-1428.

Joshua E. Stubbs (2022). Has education-related stress increased among GCSE and A-level students since the introduction of linear assessments? BERA Blog.

The Children’s Society (2023). The good childhood report 2022. Online at https://www.childrenssociety.org.uk/information/professionals/resources/good-childhood-report-2022

Young Minds (2019). YoungMinds survey results—September 2019. Available at https://www.youngminds.org.uk/media/hihnhkpm/youngminds-act-early-survey-embargoed-to-monday-2nd-september.pdf