Last month, headlines declared that teens in the UK were “the least happy in Europe”. The source was a report from the Children’s Society – drawing on data from the 2022 international Pisa study – that found 25.2% of 15-year-olds in the UK reported low life satisfaction compared to a European average of 16.6%. As is often the case, the Netherlands was declared the most “happy”, with just 6.7% reporting low life satisfaction.
It is difficult enough to try to compare things like life satisfaction across countries and cultures. And knowing a bit about the Dutch system, I’ve increasingly realised that many of these numbers don’t tell the whole story. For years, the Dutch have scored highly on “happy children” in multiple surveys, such as those by the World Health Organization and Unicef. A lot of young people are clearly in good spirits, with admirable levels of freedom and responsibility. But all of them? Actually, it turns out, we don’t know.
For one thing, the Pisa dataset that sparked all those headlines is not complete. The growing number of children in Dutch special schools were not surveyed in 2022. Children in special schools with diagnoses such as ADHD and autism will be part of the study for the first time in 2025. Influential Health Behaviour in School-aged Children (HBSC) studies also excluded Dutch special schools.
Despite a 2014 law on appropriate education, the proportion of children in Dutch special schools, particularly children with ADHD and autism, has marched upwards to a record 3.2%. And the small private school sector has ballooned. A report in the Financieele Dagblad last week suggested putting children in special schools – out of the way of Dutch parents who don’t want their “normal” ones hindered – may not be best for them. And a study by the Inspectorate of Education found children with additional needs appear less likely to get school-leavers’ qualifications in a special school than in the mainstream system.
As far as other high-scoring nations go, the Danes excluded children with dyslexia. That gave it an 11.6% exclusion rate, and in a report the Adjudication Group “noted that high levels of student exclusions may bias performance results upwards”. Latvia also had a “rather elevated” rate of missing some students, said the report, as did Croatia, Lithuania and the United States, “which showed a marked increase in exclusions due to students with functional or intellectual disabilities”. In other words, with so many children excluded from the measurements – and this doesn’t even count the number of students who have fallen out of the school system entirely – it’s hard to make glib comparisons across nations.
The consistently high scores for Dutch students also sit uncomfortably against a recent mania for testing and evaluation in this small country, which has breached all boundaries of common sense and kindness. As grades have plummeted in literacy and maths, standardised testing, provided by commercial firms, has proliferated. Many primary schools give children multiple formal tests each year. At secondary level, some schools spend three entire weeks a year on testing. Public health organisations report that teenage stress levels are rising.
If you thought the UK school inspectorate’s one-word judgments were reductive, try a Dutch school report. I’ve seen a class of teenagers summed up in rows of figures out of 10 and report cards on primary schoolchildren consisting of pages of graphs. Far from that picture of rosy happiness, some teachers and social researchers believe the entire Dutch grammar school system widens social inequality, while the stress of the test at the end of primary can amount to “child abuse”.
Thanks to three-day weeks, there aren’t enough teachers to cover classes, and as a result a huge industry in tutoring (for parents who can pay) has emerged. Some primary schools shut for one day a week last year, and more than 25% of the legally required lessons have been dropped in some secondaries.
Meanwhile, the Dutch children’s ombudsman said that even pre-Covid, the gap between contented kids and unhappy ones was widening. Children with Covid-induced difficulties struggled even more after the pandemic. Mental health problems are increasing, there are long waiting lists and criticism has emerged of “abusive” care facilities. Most worrying is a debate on euthanasia for psychiatric issues, including in children under 18: one psychologist recently told me that some Dutch children “traumatised” by poor care are now asking doctors to help them die.
Anyone familiar with the challenges faced by the most vulnerable children in the Netherlands, and the state of its education system, would not be patting themselves on the back about being “happiest in Europe”. (And that’s even before these Dutch teens realise they haven’t a hope of buying a house or settling down to have kids themselves.)
By all means, observers from the UK and elsewhere should absorb good ideas from across the world, and studies comparing countries can be helpful. But be careful about thinking that all kids are happier in some other place. They might just have different expectations – and a different measure.
Senay Boztas is an English journalist, based for the last 15 years in the Netherlands
