British teenagers more competitive than peers but more likely to bullied

British teenagers are highly motivated about their school work, but are more anxious, more likely to be bullied and are less satisfied with life than many of their peers elsewhere in the world, according to a survey.

Almost a quarter of British pupils who took part in the poll say they are being bullied a few times a month, while more than 14% say they are bullied frequently, making the UK the fourth worst affected of all 34 countries surveyed.

Anxiety levels are also high in British classrooms with seven out of 10 pupils (72%) admitting they feel anxious before taking a test, even if they are well prepared – the third highest in the survey. Girls are particularly badly affected, with 81% reporting anxiety before exams, compared with 63% of boys.

Possibly compounding the problem, UK students are also shown to be highly ambitious and competitive at school, with 90% claiming they want to be the best in whatever they do, compared with an average of 65% across the countries surveyed.

UK students are also among the highest users of the internet, with one in four 15-year-olds admitting to spending six hours online outside school hours on a typical weekday – the second highest of any country, and far higher than previous studies have suggested, prompting experts to call on the government to look at possible links between internet use and wellbeing.

The global survey of half a million 15-year-olds, carried out by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), will add to growing concern about the mental health and wellbeing of young people in the UK.

Particularly worrying is the increased risk that disadvantaged teenagers face, according to the survey, with pupils from less privileged families worse affected by high rates of bullying, unhappiness and anxiety than their wealthier peers.

Three in 10 UK pupils from less privileged backgrounds said they had been bullied, complaining of being physically abused by other students, made the target of negative rumours and deliberately left out of things.

There are also wide variations of expectation about higher education. Across OECD countries, 44% of students expect to complete university, but that number rises to three in four students in Colombia, Qatar and the US.

And while students from an immigrant background fare well in the UK, their experiences are less positive elsewhere. In 2015, 12.5% of students in participating countries were from an immigrant background. In some countries, those from an immigrant background were more likely to report feeling like outsiders, which impacts on satisfaction levels.

In the UK, while 42% of pupils polled expect to complete a university degree, less than a quarter of disadvantaged pupils expect to do so, compared with more than two-thirds of the most advantaged pupils.

The study, part of the OECD’s programme for international student assesment, also reveals that young people in the UK experience lower than average life satisfaction. Just 28% describe themselves as very satisfied with their lives, compared with an OECD average of 34%. Girls again fare worse with 28% very satisfied, compared with 33% of boys.

Students in a restaurant in La Candelaria, Bogotá. Colombian teenagers reported high levels of life satisfaction. Photograph: Alex Segre/Alamy

Elsewhere in the world there are huge disparities in life satisfaction among students. While in the Netherlands fewer than 4% are dissatisfied with their life; in Korea and Turkey the figure rises to 20%. In Montenegro and Latin American countries, including Colombia, however, more than one in two students reported high satisfaction levels.

The report also shows that despite reported links between eating a good breakfast and improved attainment, almost 30% of 15-year-olds in the UK do not eat breakfast before school – with the figure rising to more than 35% for the most disadvantaged pupils. Girls once again are worse affected, with more than two-thirds skipping breakfast compared with 22% of boys.

Natalie Perera, executive director and head of research at the Education Policy Institute (EPI), which hosted the launch of the report on Wednesday, said the findings on UK teenagers were stark, particularly for those from poorer backgrounds.

“Disadvantaged pupils are more likely to be bullied than their peers, and are more likely to skip breakfast before school – with the gap between the proportion of advantaged and disadvantaged pupils in the UK doing so the second biggest out of all 34 countries.”

Emily Frith, EPI director of mental health, said: “The findings show UK pupils have lower than average levels of life satisfaction, high levels of anxiety in the classroom, and are more likely to be bullied, compared to children in other countries.

“The government should explore how children’s wellbeing can be improved, including through the education system. It should seek to understand the causal relationship between internet use and young people’s wellbeing, and look to implement a strategy help young people develop the resilience and skills they need to live safe, digital lives.”

Responding to the report, a Department for Education spokesperson said: “These findings show young people have the motivation and desire to go as far as their talents can take them and that their parents are supporting them throughout their time at school.

“Assessment is an important part of education but it is also important that the test period is managed so students feel supported throughout. Our reforms have also put a stop to the endless treadmill of exams for young people, giving them more time to gain a greater understanding of the subject.”

British teenagers more competitive than peers but more likely to bullied

Rich Americans live up to 15 years longer than poor peers, studies find

You can’t buy time – except, it seems, in America.

Increasing inequality means wealthy Americans can now expect to live up to 15 years longer than their poor counterparts, reports in the British medical journal the Lancet have found.

Researchers said these disparities appear to be worsened by the American health system itself, which relies on for-profit insurance companies, and is the most expensive in the world.

Their conclusion? Treat healthcare as a human right.

“Healthcare is not a commodity,” wrote US Senator Bernie Sanders in an opinion article introducing the issue of the journal, whichis devoted to inequality in American healthcare.“The goal of a healthcare system should be to keep people well, not to make stockholders rich. The USA has the most expensive, bureaucratic, wasteful, and ineffective healthcare system in the world.”

Sanders, like authors of the lead report, called for single-payer health insurance or what Americans might know as “Medicare for all”, a reference to an existing public health program for older Americans.

“Making sure that every citizen has the right to childcare, healthcare, a college education, and secure retirement is not a radical idea. It is as American as apple pie,” he said.

The Lancet studies looked at how the American health system affects inequality and structural racism, and how mass incarceration and the Affordable Care Act (ACA), also known as Obamacare, have changed public health.

Among the studies’ key findings: the richest 1% live up to 15 years longer than the poorest 1%; the same gap in life expectancy widened in recent decades, making poverty a powerful indicator for death; more than one-third of low-income Americans avoid medical care because of costs (compared to 7% in Canada and 1% in the UK); the poorest fifth of Americans pay twice as much for healthcare as a share of income (6% for the poor, versus 3.2% for the rich); and life expectancy would have grown 51.1% more from 1983 to 2005had mass incarceration not accelerated in the mid-1980s.

The poorest Americans have suffered in particular, with life expectancies falling in some groups even while medicine has advanced. For example, researchers reported that the poorest fifth of women born between 1930 and 1960 statistically lived four years less than Americans in the top fifth of the socioeconomic spectrum.

All of these health outcomes arrive in the context of widening general inequality. The share of total income going to the top 1% of earners has more than doubled since 1970,making the US more unequal than all but three developed countries: Chile, Mexico and Turkey.

At the same time, the ACA brought relief to many. The number of Americans without insurance dropped from 48.6 million in 2010 to 28.6 million in 2015. The number of Americans who struggle with medical bills dropped from 41% to 35% in 2014.

Further, accounting for current public health insurance programs, military healthcare, the portion of local and state budgets used to purchase private health insurance for workers, and subsidies to employers to buy workers health insurance, researchers believe as much as 65% of health insurance nationally is already paid for by taxpayers.

The conclusions come at a tumultuous time for American healthcare.

Donald Trump’s election threw his predecessor’s market-based health laws into question. Trump promised multiple times on the campaign trail to repeal the ACA and replace it with “something terrific”.

Though Barack Obama’s signature health law insured more Americans than ever before, problems remain.

Insurance companies have increasingly passed costs on to consumers through “cost-sharing”, or asking Americans to pay more for doctor’s visits, prescription drugs and procedures before insurance kicks in. Sky-high prescription drug prices have prompted public outrage. And a requirement that Americans purchase insurance, even with government subsidies, was politically toxic.

Though Republicans promised for more than seven years to repeal the ACA – if they could only gain control of the federal government – once Trump took office, they offered a plan not conservative enough for conservatives, and not moderate enough for moderates. With an abysmal public approval rating of just 17%, the plan combusted weeks after it was introduced. Failure to pass the bill became a major loss for the Trump administration.

That has left a vacuum of ideas. Republicans tried and failed to resurrect a version of the hated plan this week. Progressives have expressed hope that single-payer reform could move into the forefront.

“I, like many others, was deeply concerned with Republican proposals that went down in flames,” said Dr David Himmelstein, a New York City doctor and co-founder of Physicians for a National Health Program, a group that lobbies for single-payer health reform. Himmelstein was also the author of one Lancet report, America: Equity and Equality in Health.

“It would have been tremendously damaging to large numbers of people in our country. So the defeat of that proposal was encouraging,” he said.

“It’s opened up much more room for debate about what there should be, so in that way, I think it’s an encouraging time that has perils but also opportunities.”

However, single-payer healthcare remains unpopular with American conservatives, who still control the government.

Robert Moffit, a researcher at the conservative thinktank the Heritage Foundation, argued that Americans would use healthcare willy-nilly if it were provided by the government.

“I mean look – you can save money with a single-payer system, don’t misunderstand me, but the quality and supply of medical services is going to be determined by government officials,” he said.

“You’re going to have inequalities in any state,” he said, calling it it “naive” to believe a “government-run system that is going to ultimately be highly politicized” would be better than a private one.

Rich Americans live up to 15 years longer than poor peers, studies find