The quality of school life, and associations with academic

All the dimensions of psychological school environment were found to be asso-ciated to some extent with perceived school performance, subjective health in-dicators or health behaviours. School strain and social relations at school stood out in respect of the outcomes studied. This is in line with previous studies (e.g.

Suldo, Riley & Shaffer 2006; Modin & Östberg 2009; Eriksson et al. 2012; Plenty et al. 2014; Moore et al. 2018) and it also supports Konu’s (2002) findings insofar as it identifies the important role of the social relations at school.

This study overall suggests an association between lower school strain, better perceived performance, fewer health compromising behaviours, and bet-ter subjective health. Students who reported lower school strain were more like-ly to report better perceived performance, better self-rated health, higher life satisfaction, fewer health complaints, and fewer health compromising behav-iours. Similar connections have been found in previous studies (Samdal, Wold

& Bronis 1999; Ding & Hall 2007).

According the first sub-study, the majority of the students felt that they had too much schoolwork, and they found school tiring. In recent years there has been an increase in students who feel pressured by schoolwork (Löfstedt et al. 2020). Going to school can be seen as a priority as well as a duty for Finnish adolescents since Finland is a country in which education is both free and com-pulsory. Hence, it would be preferable if students - and also teachers - were to gain positive experiences, joy in learning, and joy in their schoolwork. This does not mean that schools should be purely arenas for fun and play, but one would hope that they would be attended for reasons other than simple compulsion.

Meeting the needs of students who are not engaged with the school and who have negative attitudes towards the school is a real challenge, and one that teachers and school administrators currently have to face.

The teacher–student relationship is clearly crucial to students’ school life.

Students who reported good relations with their teachers were also more likely to report better perceived performance, fewer health compromising behaviours, fewer health complaints, and better self-rated health. However, good teacher-student relations were one factor associated with higher odds of being bullied.

During adolescence, non-parental adults are important, and young people in-creasingly look to them for support and guidance. Teachers can be warm, car-ing, and accepting in much the same ways as parents; teachers can also express high expectations for all students, and be available to help and guide (Kalil &

Ziol-Guest 2008). When that teacher–student relationship is not working, it can affect other aspects of school life. According to Kiilakoski (2012) well-being in school is more or less defined by the relationship between the teacher and the students. Given the positive correlation between school engagement and teach-er-student relations, the promotion of positive school experiences should be an important issue for policymakers concerned with school development. The same would apply to actions aimed at decreasing students’ school strain.

Teachers are the people who are most often present in social situations with students, and they affect adolescents’ well-being, either intentionally or not. An important goal would be to further support teachers’ professional un-derstanding of how to create the kind of social structures and practices that would improve students’ school experience. Teachers also need time and sup-port to meet the students. In today’s school, the teachers’ workload is increas-ing, new responsibilities are being assigned, and resources are being cut back.

According to TALIS (Teaching and Learning International Survey) 2018, Finn-ish teachers experience stress arising from the multitude of requirements com-ing from the municipality or state, from the abundance of administrative duties, and from the requirement to adapt classes to students with special educational needs (Taajamo & Puhakka 2020). There is little time left for individual atten-tion.

At the start of this millennium, health education was added to the curricu-lum as an official, obligatory, and autonomous school subject in Finland. Ever since then, there has been training for professional health education teachers.

The subject is a good channel to address students’ school experiences and school life in general. However, this is clearly not enough by itself. The imple-mentation of holistically-oriented procedures aimed at enhancing students’

health – for example, the Health Promoting School approach – has the potential to contribute to the health of the entire school community (Sormunen 2012;

World Health Organization 2020), and has also been shown to be effective in more than one country (Lee et al. 2006; Rowe, Stewart & Patterson 2007).

The idea of a health-promoting school is included in the National Core Curricu-lum in Finland. The curricuCurricu-lum seeks to develop schools which will promote the well-being and learning of students through multi-professional co-operation and the in-volvement of families (Välimaa et al. 2008). The National Core Curriculum also pro-vides a basis for local curricula. In fact, most Finnish schools do indeed have a joint operational model for addressing key challenges related to health promotion in the school community, either integrated with their curriculum or as a written policy – yet health promotion activity varies considerably between schools (Rimpelä, Fröjd & Pel-tonen 2010). Clearly, a challenge for policymakers, teachers, students, parents and the entire school community is to create such environments that can promote well-being, make positive changes in the psychosocial school environment, and meet the overall developmental needs of adolescents (McNeely, Nonnemaker & Blum 2002).

Positive peer relations have been associated with better self-rated health, higher life satisfaction, and fewer health complaints, but also with more health-compromising behaviours. Social acceptance may strengthen self-esteem, thus helping individuals to perform better and to value themselves. Such a positive cycle could also affect students’ perceived health. Pyhältö, Soini, and Pietarinen (2010) found that students experience social interactions at the school as the most rewarding, but also the most problematic aspect of schooling. This obser-vation was supported when the COVID-19 pandemic hit the world in 2020 and students were obliged to study at home. According to Herkama & Repo (2020), a third of the students in upper secondary school reported that they were actu-ally relieved not to see their schoolmates. On the other hand, feelings of

loneli-ness were also more common during the lockdown period (Herkama & Repo 2020).

As noted above, there are indications that peer involvement can create the kind of environment that supports and encourages health-compromising be-haviour, and that adolescents may find it hard to refuse such peer pressure (see also McLellan et al. 1999). McLellan and colleagues (1999) noted that students who reported less peer support were less likely to smoke or drink. Furthermore, it has been observed that connectedness to friends is strongly associated with health-compromising behaviours: adolescents who report strong attachment to friends are more likely to report smoking (Carter et al. 2007). In addition, fre-quent binge drinking appears to be associated with greater peer involvement (Johansen, Rasmussen & Madsen 2006; Desousa et al. 2007). The present study is consistent with these findings, insofar as students who had poor relations with their peer at school were less likely to engage in health-compromising be-haviours. Here one should bear in mind that the relations outside school, in free-time, and in other living environments, can be very different from the rela-tions within the school. This study only focused on the latter and might not cap-ture the entire phenomenon.

Almost all the dimensions of the psychosocial school environment showed an association with alcohol use and smoking. However, the associations were not so obvious with respect to breakfast consumption, physical activity, and sleeping habits. This suggests that there could be some other underlying factors that would better predict these behaviours. In this regard, Villard, Rydén, and Ståhle (2007) concluded that along with social aspects (such as parental atti-tudes) certain environmental factors such as socio-economic circumstances and the geographical locality had an influence on physical activity and healthy food choices. On the other hand, in their study, Karvonen and Rimpelä (2002) were unable to find major differences between different types of Finnish municipali-ties with regard to social relations, health behaviour, or health, even though the living conditions appeared to differ widely.

According to this study the majority of adolescents felt that they received support from home. Parental support was perceived as the most positive di-mension by the students. Similar findings have been reported before (see e.g.

Kämppi et al 2012). Less support from parents was associated with more health-compromising behaviours and more health complaints. Furthermore, it ap-peared that lowered parental monitoring and bonding was associated with multiple health-compromising behaviours among girls. Parental support was also found to be important for the overall subjective health of the students.

Family affluence seemed to be less important for students’ school experience, although students with higher perceived family affluence perceived their school performance to be better, and girls who reported higher family affluence per-ceived higher life satisfaction. Lowered family affluence showed an association with being bullied.

Previous studies have shown that in Finland, adolescents’ health inequali-ties can partly be explained by the educational paths they follow (e.g. Berg et al.

2011; Luopa et al. 2014). Low school achievement, together with a lack of educa-tional plans, is related to higher mortality (Berg et al. 2011). Students who fol-low the non-academic path (i.e., who move to vocational education) have more health-compromising behaviours and poorer perceived health than students who follow an academic path (Ruokolainen & Mäki 2015). In the present study educational aspiration seemed to be important for academic achievement, stu-dents’ perceived health, and health behaviour, favouring those who were in-tending to choose an academic path. However, it is noteworthy that in Finland these chosen educational paths are not permanent, and that there is a possibility to continue studying in various forms and along various paths throughout life.

Possibilities to change paths are supported by the fact that in Finland, education is free from preschool to higher education.

6.1.3 The quality of school life and associations with bullying victimization