Children most happy in Year 5 - survey

Schoolchildren are most happy during their primary school years, especially the penultimate year.

A survey conducted by Antidote, a British charity whose aim is "to create an emotionally literate society", found that happiness subsides when children hit the last year of primary school, as the feeling is clouded by exams. Students' enjoyment of school declines after Year 5 and is all downhill from then on.

Students' happiness is at its high point during primary school mainly because testing is less formal and they are allowed to develop good relationships with their form teachers.

Antidote sought the views of about 8,000 pupils in 25 primary and secondary schools in the UK. It found that there is a 25 per cent drop in the extent to which students find that school makes them feel capable, listened to, accepted and safe from Year 5 upwards. By the age of 10, 82 per cent of students say they are happy. This number declines to 58 per cent by the time they are facing their GCSEs.

According to the charity, whose results were reported by the BBC, and whose main aim is to improve learning environments, "What this tells us is that, as students start work on their GCSEs, over 40 per cent of them experience a low level of well-being... Their experience of secondary school has not fostered in them the sort of emotional state that fosters motivation to learn and to get on with each other".

According to the survey, three quarters of children in Year 5 expressed that they felt connected to adults and children in school.

However, the survey also found out that by the time the students reach our equivalent of Sixth Form, the year they sit for their A-levels, seven out of 10 said they felt enthused by the school environment.

Antidote director James Park said: "These results do more to help us explain why there are so many complaints from school staff and young people being disruptive and becoming disengaged from learning... They also tell us where we need to focus if we want to improve the situation".

He also said that learning was a "social activity" which grows from students' relationships with adults and peers, and that there was a strong link between levels of creativity and good relationships.