by Bianca Muffato, III F
This year with our school we decided to conduct a survey about the topic of well-being among students, to see how the school is perceived and in which ways it affects us. After completing the survey in our school, its questions were sent to a school in Sweden, and we had the opportunity to compare the different results obtained, thus having the occasion to highlight the problems among students and to show the differences between the two school systems.
After the students of both schools completed the questionnaire, we noticed how different their answers were: one of the first questions asked whether students were satisfied with the settings where they attend lessons or not, and, from the results, it’s evident that the Swedish students appreciate much more their scholastic environment, with a 75% selecting the option “yes”, while the Italian students have a more divided opinion regarding the question, with a majority being partly or not completely satisfied.
This stark difference is shown even in the following question, regarding the facilities the school offers, particularly the toilets.
The majority of the students at Giulio Cesare who took the survey, 56,8%, rated them with 2 out of 5, no-one rated them with a 5 out of 5, and the remaining students gave mixed responses, with a 15,9% giving a 1 out of 5 and a 25% a 3 out of 5, while a 95,8% of the Swedish students rated them with either 4 or 5, while only a 4,2% rated the facilities with a 3. These results already demonstrate how students from different countries perceive the school and its system, and it was already partly tackled with the interview in our newspapers with two Swedish students who visited our school last year with the Erasmus+ project, who were surprised, among other things, by the different school environment, since their school was almost 30 years old, therefore their facilities were clean and well maintained. Another question that received completely different answers was the one asking if the students thought the school toilets were clean and well equipped, and once again, as mentioned previously, the results speak for themselves.
As a matter of fact, in our school, 75% of students rated the toilets a 1 out of 5, confirming that the students have a negative view of the school’s facilities and the environment that surrounds them, while quite the opposite happened with the Swedish students, with a 79,2% of them giving a 5 out of 5 mark.
Besides the school’s facilities and the settings where students spend part of daily life, another distinction between the two groups of students concerns time management and the quantity of homeworks or of study hours.
From the answers it became clear that in Swedish schools the amount of homework must definitely be lower than the one in Italian schools, since Swedish students not only have more time in the afternoon, with 100% of the students interviewed stating that they study less than three hours per day on average, but also overall during the course of the week, with 75% of them being able to pursue their interests after school three times a week or more, while in Italy, 34,1% has no time at all, 15,9% only once a week and the remaining 50% is divided between being able to take part in other activities either twice or three times a week.
However, a more problematic aspect is the one concerning how many hours of sleep students get, and the outcomes of this question are seriously dramatic, due to the fact that out of the Italian students only a 6,8% usually sleeps between 7 and 8 hours, while an overwhelming majority sleeps 5 to 6 hours per night.
On the other hand, out of the Swedish students, 58,3% sleep 7 to 8 hours.
This is definitely worrying, especially since during the developmental stage it is advisable to sleep 8 hours per night, and lack of sleep can impair learning and cause stress, tiredness and overall contributes to the general sense of unease found among the students. Furthermore, the school community in which Swedish students find themselves is perceived as much more open and inclusive towards students, with around 91.6% believing that the school is supportive, while the school community in Italy is seen differently by students, with 40,9% affirming that the community is partly welcoming and inclusive, 36,4% thinking that it is quite supporting.
Even the school’s concerns and initiatives towards the students’ well-being aren’t considered equally, with the students from Sweden firmly convinced that the school is prepared to help psychologically the students and that the school promotes support resources, while the students from our school have a diametrically opposed point of view.
These differences are due to the fact that in Sweden not only the Swedish Education Act, along with the Swedish Discrimination Act, strives to protect children and students from discrimination and degrading treatment, but all students have access to a school doctor, school nurse, psychologist and school welfare officer – all tax-funded.
Lastly, even the relationship between teachers and students varies according to the results we got from the interview.
Firstly, it’s undeniable that Italian students have a decisively more negative view of their teachers, with many of them feeling as if they aren’t judged for who they are, but mainly for their grades, in particular a 40,9% is convinced that this is the case, which would explain why many students in our school have reported that they feel extremely overwhelmed due to the high expectations they think are placed on them, therefore this stressfulness is closely connected to their performance,while on the contrary, Swedish students share a more positive attitude towards the teaching staff, with a 70,9% saying that they are judged and treated not based on their academic results but on their personalities and the way they relate with others, which explains why among them almost all of them are not only not intimidated by the teachers but also discuss with them freely, considering them friendly and open to dialogue.
In fact, when a group of Swedish students came to our school last year, my friend and I had the occasion to interface with two foreign students, the same girls we interviewed for the Erasmus+, and while talking, we compared our scholastic systems, discussing the differences and similarities shared by them, and one of the main topic of discussion was the relation with teachers.
The two Swedish students told us that their relationship with them is way more casual, based on mutual respect, so they often engage in friendly discussions about different topics, which is completely different to the relationship a great part of students from our school experiences with teachers, a relationship that is much more distant and sometimes based on fear, so quite the opposite compared to the more relaxed one the Swedish students have, that could also be equated to a friendship.
So from this survey it’s possible to see the many problems we suffer from our scholastic system, but, at the same time, the results open the possibility to better it, by understanding the school’s criticalities and trying to solve them, by improving with suggestions from both teachers and students the facilities and the quality the school offers to us and to future students.
