by Sofia Liverani, III F
After running a survey last October in our school and in a Swedish school to get to know the student’s opinions about their well-being and comparing the results, we noticed very important differences between the two countries.
To begin with, we asked about what seems to be one of the biggest issues in Italian schools: marks. The 56,8% of the Italian students we interviewed stated that the grading system is dated and should almost certainly be changed, whilst only the 18,2% reckons it works well; on the other hand, the Swedish grading system is, according to the 75% of the Swedish students, useful and adequate. The Italian students are hesitant on judging their education system as meritocratic or not – only the 2,3% of them affirms with soreness it is, and the 9,1% that it is not – whilst the Swedish have again a solid 75% stating they’re positive. One of the reasons of this discrepancy probably is that in Italy the grading scale ranges from 0 to 10, where 5 and below is considered a failing grade, whilst in Sweden teachers mark tests with a scale with six grades from A to F, where only F represents a failing grade.
As for the teaching staff, the experience of the Italian students is heterogeneous, perhaps because that group of old-school teachers is slowly retiring to make way for the new generation, causing that about 50% of the students did not take sides – the rest of them spread out at the ends, leaning more towards the experience of dealing with strict teachers who are difficult to talk to. Once again, the Swedish scholastic experience is much more serene: almost 80% of the students stated that their teachers are absolutely open to debate, and the rest were still happy with their behaviour; 91,7% of the Swedish students we interviewed declared they aren’t afraid of their teachers at all. A Swedish student who came to Rome with the Erasmus+ project stated in an interview published on this same newspaper “Le idi di…” that she had “heard [Italian] students talking to and about their teachers as if they were terrified of them”, noticing “a great distance here [in Italy], whereas our teachers are practically our best friends: we call them by their first names and without any titles”.
Another important difference that we observed between the two European schools is how the setting is described by students: 45.5% of the Italian students rated their school’s environment 3 out of 5, while the rest were evenly split and never gave extreme ratings; on the contrary, 66,7% of the Swedish students rated theirs 5 out of 5, and nobody gave a rating of 2 nor lower. The previously mentioned interview suggests that part of the reason is how recent the respective buildings are: “our school is very clean in design and quite modern, it is less than 30 years old”, the Swedish student declared, “but yours has very large rooms, very high ceilings, and so on, but I understand that it is much older”.
A similar situation to the one above is observed about the toilet conditions, with 95,8% of the students from Sweden giving them a rating of 4 or higher whereas 93,2% of our students rated them 2 or lower. However, the respectable quality of our laboratories and gyms and the ample space of the building are fairly recognised: a 25% reckons that school facilities are overall sufficiently satisfying.
Shocking was the discrepancy between our daily routines and the Scandinavians’: while our students have varied sleeping schedules, with the majority (52,3%) stating that they rest between 5 and 6 hours per night – the rest varies between 6-7 hours per night (30%) and less than 4 (almost a 10%) – 58,3% of the interviewed Swedish can serenely affirm they get between 7 and 8 hours of rest per night, and 37,5% still remains around the 6 to 7 hours; 4,2% of them manages even to reach 9. Needless to say, our numbers, especially when compared to theirs, are concerning. The most shocking difference between our answers and theirs was, though, the one to the question: “how many hours do you study per day, on average?”. 75% of the Italian students stated that they study 4 to 6 hours a day, and 18,1% even over 7 a day. These answers, coming from a liceo classico, might not surprise us, but they sound extremely worrying when compared to the Swedish numbers, which tell us that a perfect 100% of their students spend less than 3 hours a day studying. This explains why 75% of them manage to take part in leisure activities outside school three times a week – while 16,7% do it twice a week – as opposed to the 35% of Italian students who don’t manage at all – although a 38,6% does find the time for extracurricular afternoon activities.
The questions regarding stress and self-perception have been mixed in both countries but we can surely affirm that in Italy the situation is worse: 31,8% of the respondents told us that stress related to school has strongly affected their relationship with food and with their body, whilst in Sweden the numbers do not go above 16,6%.
Needless to say, there is room for improvement in both European schools; some of the solutions we proposed in the survey, among them the introduction of a second break, would be welcome by both sides (91% in Italy, 37,5% in Sweden, with 45% who don’t take sides). What emerges from the Italian data is that the students feel oppressed by the load of study their school asks them to do, by the poorly cured setting they work in and by the social environment that lives it with, of course, the great stress that follows this all.
