Comparative well-being report published

The project has published its comparative analysis of student well-being in secondary vocational education across Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, Finland and Portugal. It is the main result of WP2 and the evidence base for the interventions that follow.

The headline figure is uncomfortable: across the five countries, roughly 30 to 42 per cent of VET students experience moderate to severe psychological distress. The report also shows that these struggles are not only about schoolwork. They are tied to money, housing, and the pressure of a career path that is still too often treated as a second choice.

What the comparison adds is the institutional picture. Each national system produces its own kind of pressure, which means an intervention that works in Finland cannot simply be copied to Portugal. That is the problem the next phase of the project has to solve.

The report is available in Results and resources.