The last ten years have seen a a dip in how satisfied 10 to 15-year-olds are with school, and their feelings about schoolwork have been on a similar trajectory since 2018.

Now, at first glance, it might not seem like a massive drop, especially when the scores are still hanging around the 4 to 5 out of 7 range. But if we rewind the clock to when they first started doing these surveys, it's pretty clear that after a positive start things have shifted for the worse. And while happiness scores for schoolwork stayed relatively stable in 2019, they took a downward turn in 2020, 2021 and again in 2022.

The pandemic clearly hasn’t helped. Young people have been worried about playing catch-up with the education they missed out on, and getting back to school doesn’t seem to have eased those anxieties. To put it in numbers, one in four 11-16 year olds have been worrying over the task of catching up on their schoolwork. And a substantial 43% of them about how COVID might affect their upcoming exams.¹ We also can't ignore the fact that the education landscape has changed quite a bit over the years, with a lot more focus on higher education and a general shift to linear assessments in GCSE and A Levels in 2014. It's possible all these factors are piling on the pressure