Secondary school students are facing the most pressure in a decade

More than half of the secondary school pupils feel stressed about falling behind on their coursework during the pandemic, the highest proportion in the past decade, a youth group has found in a survey. 

The Hong Kong Federation of Youth Groups interviewed over 4,000 secondary school students between September and October, and found that 52.2 percent of students’ stress index has reached seven or above on a scale of 1 to 10. It was 10.5 percentage points higher than last year’s.

Hsu Siu-man, HKFYG services coordinator, said that academic stress coupled with the ongoing epidemic leads to the significant increase in students' stress and anxiety levels, and some students are even reluctant to go to school.

Forty five percent of the respondents expressed their worry over falling behind their study schedule due to the prolonged online learning at home, while 33.4 percent are concerned with catching Covid-19.

The results suggested that students’ major source of stress stemmed from “preparing for tests and exams”, followed by fearing that their “results not matching their expectations” and “having less rest time”. 

Given the decreasing number of new Covid-19 cases, the Secretary for Education Kevin Yeung Yun-hung previously announced that schools can resume face-to-face classes in two phases on a half-day basis from September 23. 

Primary Five and Six, Form Five and Six, newcomers in primary or secondary school and final-year kindergarten pupils, were the first groups back on campus while Form Two to Form Four, Primary Two to Primary Four, and kindergarten children in K1 and K2 would follow from September 29.

More than 70 percent of the interviewed students agreed that controlling the coronavirus epidemic is more important than catching up the learning progress as a majority of them said that they are willing to sacrifice extracurricular activities such as athletics meets.

However, 67.2 percent of the students expressed their wish to return to the campus for face-to-face learning.

Over 20 percent of the students showing signs of anxiety, with 5.4 percent of them display moderate anxiety while 4.7 percent of them report serious anxiety issues, according to the self-rating anxiety scale.

The young service organisation said that the scale is not an evaluation tool for diagnosing anxiety but said that the situation is worthy of concern. 

Hsu encouraged students to embrace the opportunity of on-campus learning while alleviating their stress levels by recognising the stressors. They can also seek emotional support by contacting HKFYG’s Youthline. Schools should also adjust their course schedules, and reduce the scope of assessment to ease the burden on students.