Some 34 percent of local secondary school students feel “very much” pressured by the burden of homework, according to a survey by the General Association of Chinese Students of Macau.
The survey, which was cited by Macau Post Daily, found that just 10 percent of the 1,769 respondents felt “almost no pressure” from their homework obligations.
Nearly 75 percent of students polled said they participated in after-school tutorials and extracurricular classes for at least one, but sometimes as many as five, hours a day.
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Besides schoolwork, other sources of student stress identified by the survey included
interpersonal relationships (more than 77 percent), family finances (nearly 57 percent) and part-time jobs (close to 19 percent).
Most students said they relieved stress by “sleeping,” followed by “listening to music” and “playing video games,” while only 30 percent choose outdoor activities and other forms of exercise.
The survey comes in the wake of a recent study which found that local youths do not make minimum WHO standards for physical activity. Other research has found that young people in Macao are at significant risk of “moderate to severe depression.”
