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English Children Are Some of the Saddest in the World

According to a recent report, England is an incredibly miserable place to be a schoolchild, second only to South Korea.

Read: Scottish People Are Getting Too Fat to Be Cremated

According to some doomsayers over at the Children's Society, kids in England are "among the unhappiest in the world." A report into the satisfaction of our nation's schoolchildren showed that a third say they'd been bullied, and half felt excluded.

The report looked at children from 15 diverse nations to assess how much they hate their lives. It turns out Romanian children are having a whale of a time, with only 1.1 percent claiming low satisfaction. By contrast, 7.1 percent English nippers are unsatisfied, second only to South Korea at 9.8 percent.

In terms of young girls feeling OK with their bodies, England and South Korea bottomed the table again, with an average satisfaction of 7.3 and 7.1 out of 10, respectively. Colombia topped the table, with a 9.6 average. All this misery apparently gets worse with time: In the space between the ages of ten and 12, enjoyment of school drops from 61 percent to 43 percent.

No one likes school, obviously; it sucks and it smells. But why is it so extra bad here in the UK? Deputy general secretary of the National Union of Teachers, Kevin Courtney, said that "serious stress-related anxiety" as a result of British schools' "exam factories" culture was to blame.

A sad little bastard (via)