Norwegian researchers just confirmed a long-held suspicion for many: girls are happier than boys at school.
Understanding why may all boil down to biology, they say.
Girls get more of the happy hormone dopamine through social relationships, including with their friends and classmates.
Alternatively, boys get their dopamine through more self-involved behavior, and they need more activity because of their higher levels of the male sex hormone testosterone.
“Long school days, sitting still, does not suit boys,” Hermundur Sigmundsson, a professor at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, explained in a statement.
Youthful exuberance
Sigmundsson and his team studied more than 1,600 Norwegian children who were between first and fourth grade.
The researchers asked the children questions about their friends, well-being and safety at school, as well as what subjects they liked.
The girls and the younger students in the six-to-nine-year-old group reported greater well-being and a stronger preference for their class than boys and older students.
Happiness at school was linked to having more friends.
“We find a significant correlation between well-being and all the questions we asked. Enjoying school and feeling safe at school are strongly connected,” said Sigmundsson.
Academic performance: real and perceived
The researchers also asked the students about their performance in school across reading, science, math, and physical education.
Their answers revealed that girls scored higher than boys in reading and science. They also believe they did better in both.
Boys believe they are the best at math, and the researchers found no difference in how much boys and girls like the subject.
Lastly, boys liked physical education the most, but there was no difference in how well girls and boys thought they performed.
One potentially surprising finding was a weak correlation between feeling good about reading and physical education.
It’s unclear how much Norway’s specific educational system might have played a role in these findings.
An international takeaway
Previous data and research on schoolchildren in the U.S. showed different results.
Data released in 2023 from New York City found that girls outperform boys academically but are unhappier at school.
Surveys of American teenagers since the 1980s show that girls have higher grades and greater leadership in school, whereas boys are more likely to be disruptive and fewer of them say they plan to go to college, according to the Pew Research Center.
“In the last 50 years, as girls have made gains, what we’ve seen is boys haven’t made the same gains,” Matt Englar-Carlson, who studies boys and men at Cal State Fullerton, told The New York Times last year.
Sigmundsson says his advice to increase the well-being of all students is to add passion projects and more physical activity to help keep children engaged.
In the future, the researchers aim to look at how those additional efforts will affect schoolchildren.