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SCHOOLS

School kids ‘suffer from stress too early’

German children get too much homework, have to take too many tests, and are under pressure from parents, a new study into the stress suffered by children between seven and nine suggests.

Published: 21 November 2012 15:55 CET
School kids 'suffer from stress too early'
Photo: DPA

One in four children in the second and third year of primary school said they feel stressed “often” or “very often” according to the study, released Wednesday by the German child protection association (DKSB) and the PROSOZ institute for social research.

School was identified as the biggest source of stress, with a third of children saying they felt pressured at school, while one in six got stressed by their families.

“We were particularly surprised that school causes stress so early and among a relatively large proportion of children,” said Anja Beisenkamp, one of the authors of the study, which questioned nearly 4,700 children in 11 German states.

The survey also found that seven-to-nine-year-olds do not necessarily switch on the TV or the computer to relax. More than half said they went out to play or read or drew pictures indoors to relax.

Around 40 percent said they played computer games to relax, while another 13 percent said they did not know what they should do to relax.

The study also looked into what children knew about living a healthy lifestyle and nutrition.

“Unfortunately far too many children get their knowledge of health issues from adverts,” said Dietrich Grönemeyer, one of the study’s academic advisors. He said schools should help in this area.

One particular cause for concern was that as many as one in five children never or rarely ate breakfast before school.

The Local/bk

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DISCRIMINATION

Schools in Sweden discriminate against parents with Arabic names: study

Parents with Arabic-sounding names get a less friendly response and less help when choosing schools in Sweden, according to a new study from the University of Uppsala.

Published: 6 April 2022 12:05 CEST
Schools in Sweden discriminate against parents with Arabic names: study

In one of the largest discrimination experiments ever carried out in the country, 3,430 primary schools were contacted via email by a false parent who wanted to know more about the school. The parent left information about their name and profession.

In the email, the false parent stated that they were interested in placing their child at the school, and questions were asked about the school’s profile, queue length, and how the application process worked. The parent was either low-educated (nursing assistant) or highly educated (dentist). Some parents gave Swedish names and others gave “Arabic-sounding” names.

The report’s author, Jonas Larsson Taghizadeh said that the study had demonstrated “relatively large and statistically significant negative effects” for the fictional Arabic parents. 

“Our results show that responses to emails signed with Arabic names from school principals are less friendly, are less likely to indicate that there are open slots, and are less likely to contain positive information about the school,” he told The Local. 

READ ALSO: Men with foreign names face job discrimination in Sweden: study

The email responses received by the fictional Arabic parents were rated five percent less friendly than those received by the fictional Swedish parents, schools were 3.2 percentage points less likely to tell Arabic parents that there were open slots at the school, and were 3.9 percentage points less likely to include positive information about the municipality or the school. 

There was no statistically significant difference in the response rate and number of questions answered by schools to Swedish or Arabic-sounding parents. 

Taghizadeh said that there was more discrimination against those with a low social-economic status job than against those with an Arabic name, with the worst affected group being those who combined the two. 

“For socioeconomic discrimination, the results are similar, however, here the discrimination effects are somewhat larger,” he told The Local. 

Having a high economic status profession tended to cancel out the negative effects of having an Arabic name. 

“The discrimination effects are substantially important, as they could potentially indirectly influence parents’ school choice decision,” Taghizadeh said.

“Investigating socioeconomic discrimination is also important in itself, as discrimination is seldom studied and as explicit discrimination legislation that bans class-based discrimination is rare in Western countries including Sweden, in contrast to laws against ethnic discrimination.” 

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