The global educational survey conducted in 2015 reveals that Swiss students not only achieve good results in maths and science but are also frontrunners when it comes to general satisfaction with life.

“Finland, the Netherlands and Switzerland seem to manage to combine good results with a high level of happiness,” the authors of the study wrote in the preface.

On a scale of one to ten, the Swiss 15-year-olds had an average happiness level of 7.72.

Of the 35 OECD countries only adolescents in Mexico, Finland, the Netherlands and Iceland had higher scores.

And almost 40 percent of the Swiss study participants said they were “very happy” with their lives compared with a 12 percent OECD average.

The authors said teachers played a key role in creating the conditions for students’ well-being in school.

But the Swiss youth are less ambitious than most, the study found. Only 40 percent wanted to be among the best in the class compared with 60 percent across the OECD.

Swiss youth also had a more relaxed attitude to exams than most of their counterparts: 33.5 percent said they were very nervous before a test compared with an OECD average of 55.5 percent.

The study also found that Swiss youth were as affected by bullying as their counterparts in other countries. Almost 17 percent said they were regularly bullied or ridiculed, just two percent below the average.

Swiss participants took part in more sport (73 percent) than the average (70 percent) and spent less time on the internet than their counterparts elsewhere.