School performance, school segregation, and stress-related symptoms: comparing Helsinki and Stockholm

Abstract

This study investigates cross-cultural differences in the interrelation between school performance, school segregation, and stress-related health among 9th-grade students in the greater Stockholm and Helsinki areas. Contrary to the Swedish case, it has been proposed that school performance in Finland is largely independent of the specific school attended and of socioeconomic background. Finland also stands out as a contrast to Sweden considering their better performance in the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) surveys. Our first 2 hypotheses explore whether there is a greater degree of school segregation in Stockholm than in Helsinki, and our second pair of hypotheses test whether Finland’s school success has come at a price in terms of increased student stress. Our results largely confirm that Stockholm schools are less “equal” and more segregated than those in Helsinki. We also find that school performance is more strongly linked to stress-related complaints among students in Helsinki than in Stockholm, especially among Finnish girls.