Abstract
Objectives
Education is an important tool to reduce health inequalities. Several factors influence the educational trajectory of children, with school satisfaction being one of them. The aim was to explore how learning difficulties, a disrupted social context and family affluence relate to school satisfaction.
Methods
We used data from the 2018 Slovak cross-sectional Health Behaviour in School-aged Children-study (age 15 years; N = 913; 50.3% boys). School satisfaction was categorized as liking school and caring about education (satisfied), disliking school but caring about education or vice versa (inconsistent), and disliking school and not caring about education (indifferent). We explored the association of learning difficulties, disrupted social context and family affluence with school satisfaction using multinomial logistic regression.
Results
Boys, and children having learning difficulties, or disruption in the social context and living in low affluence family were significantly less likely to be satisfied at school.
Conclusions
The key is to create a stimulating and encouraging environment at school, where children successfully learn functional literacy and feel well. The more satisfaction pupils get from school, the more likely is a favourable educational trajectory for them.
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Availability of data and materials
The datasets generated and/or analysed during the current study are not publicly available.
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Funding
This work was supported by the Slovak Research and Development Agency under Contract No. APVV-18-0070. The funders had no role in the study design, data collection or analysis, or in the decision to publish or preparation of the manuscript.
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LB and AMG participated in the design of the study, analysed the data, interpreted results and drafted the manuscript. JPD and SAR helped substantially with the design of the study, drafted the manuscript and helped with the interpretation of the results. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.
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The study was approved by the Ethics Committee of the Medical faculty at Safarik University in Kosice under no. 16N/2017 and is in accordance with the 1964 Declaration of Helsinki and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.
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Bosakova, L., Madarasova Geckova, A., van Dijk, J.P. et al. School is (not) calling: the associations of gender, family affluence, disruptions in the social context and learning difficulties with school satisfaction among adolescents in Slovakia. Int J Public Health 65, 1413–1421 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00038-020-01474-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00038-020-01474-4