Educational performance pressure and mental ill-being: the case of Danish primary and lower secondary schools, 1975–2024

Abstract

Mental ill-being among children and adolescents have increased in many high-income countries. The causes for this development are still unclear, but due to the scale of the problem, broader societal changes are likely to contribute. One of the societal level hypotheses–the “educational stressors hypotheses”–suggests that the transformation in many high-income countries from industrial to knowledge economies makes a well-educated workforce increasingly important. Hence, performance monitoring and performance pressure increase. This article investigates 50 years of educational reforms to analyse whether they introduce increased structural performance pressure. Document analysis of policy documents in Danish primary and lower secondary education constitute the empirical data material. As a least likely case it contributes with knowledge about the extent of formalised performance pressure in education. During the investigated period two shifts emerge. The first introduces tests and examinations as technologies that produce external knowledge about the pupils’ performance. Hence, the performance of each pupil becomes highly visible and comparable in an external panopticon-like gaze. The second shift introduces mandatory self-evaluation and career-planning. It adds a mirror like self-gaze where the pupils are to see and monitor their own performance in accordance with their future wishes. The current performance measures in Danish education are in line with many high-income countries, adding to the hegemony of structural performance pressure in education and qualitatively substantiating the educational stressors hypothesis.