Ask any educator what the learning experience should be for young people and they are likely to tell you that time at school should be about self-discovery, education and self-improvement. Yet, it seems that for many young people school attendance is one of the most stressful periods in personal life. The effects of stress on young people could often lead to mental and physical breakdown and even anxiety and depression.

The causes of stress in schoolchildren are various. Secondary school students could be exposed to bullying, money problems at home, academic pressure, a toxic school environment, excessive extracurricular activities, peer pressure, parental tension as well as work overload. Various international studies confirm that the most common cause of anxiety for most school children is work overload.

Maltese schoolchildren between the ages of 11 and 15 are “the most stressed by the amount of academic work they have to do every day”, according to a World Health Organisation study. It would be too simplistic and dangerous to write off this reality by stating that many of today’s young people were born with a silver spoon in their mouth and have been too mollycoddled by their parents. The reality is that people do not respond to stress in the same way. Each student will react differently to stress triggers and a good stress management strategy must define different tactics on how to ease stress among schoolchildren.

Private lessons are a national obsession with most parents believing that they must expose their children to extra hours of learning every week to improve their academic qualifications. Malta Union of Teachers president Kevin Bonello put his finger on the pulse of many parents when he said: “We have an obsession in Malta with private lessons. We seem to think we have to send our children to extra classes if they are going to pass exams.”

What makes the situation even worse is that some parents insist on their children signing up for extracurricular sports or artistic activities that make excessive demands of children’s free time. Children who are not so involved in extracurricular activities but are still stressed out by the excessive overload of academic work they are subjected to at school often indulge in dangerous habits like overeating, or spending an inordinate amount of time playing computer games or communicating on social media.

A soul-searching exercise needs to be undertaken by parents, students and educators on how best to deal with this epidemic of stressed young people. The first issue to be addressed is that of whether an academic education route is suited for all students. The mindset that a university education is by definition the best option for all students is open for debate.

Many young people will certainly thrive if they were offered the opportunity to further their education in well-organised apprenticeship schemes or in vocational colleges where more importance is given to practical work-related experience. The stigma that is associated with vocational education needs to be challenged by convincing parents and students that what matters in education is the optimisation of one’s natural talents and skills.

The working conditions of teachers need to be looked into because there is a lingering suspicion that the demand for private lessons may be partly reinforced by teachers’ attitudes in the classroom. Teachers need to have an adequate remuneration package and the right environment to then demand of them they will dedicate their full energy to teaching students in their class during normal school hours.

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