New NIE study to examine well-being and behaviour of girls in top secondary schools

SINGAPORE - Researchers will be studying how life in top Singapore schools affects the well-being of girls, who have been found to be at greater risk of stress and problematic behaviours.

The study by the National Institute of Education (NIE) aims to recruit 4,200 secondary school students from three girls’ schools and one co-ed school in Singapore.

The co-ed school has been included to study a smaller group of boys for comparison, said Dr Jacqueline Lee Tilley, the study’s lead investigator.

To be conducted over three years, from 2025 to 2028, the study is the first of its kind in Singapore to look at what affects the behaviour of teenage girls in high-achieving schools.

These are defined by the research team as schools where students consistently perform well in national exams or co-curricular activities.

Dr Tilley declined to reveal the names of the four schools, but The Straits Times understands that one of them is Methodist Girls’ School.

Participants will take part in a yearly 45-minute online survey until they graduate or when the study ends in 2028. They may also be invited to join other follow-up studies.

Questions will be centred on four areas – their well-being, academic competence, and perspectives of school and of family life.

Speaking to The Straits Times, Dr Tilley from NIE’s Department of Psychology and Child and Human Development, said this is the first large-scale study that tracks teenage girls here over time.

The study will also involve parents, teachers, school leaders and school counsellors through the use of surveys, interviews and daily diaries. The aim is to see if there is any difference in perspectives between the adults and the students, said Dr Tilley.

Inspiration for the study

The idea for the study was sparked by findings from research in the 1990s by Dr Suniya Luther, a psychology professor from Arizona State University, on students in high-achieving communities in the United States.

“What she noticed was that there was a surprising elevated rate of substance use and depression in these youth, compared to what one would expect for national norms,” said Dr Tilley.

Dr Luther had recorded that youth in high-achieving schools in the US showed clinically significant anxiety and depression about six to seven times higher than national norms.

After Dr Luther died, her work was picked up by other US research institutes, which began identifying high-achieving schools as high-risk environments for students’ well-being.

“They were beginning to see that we should start paying attention to this group of students as well,” said Dr Tilley. This was in contrast to the more traditional risk factors like trauma, poverty and discrimination which were usually studied.

“Typically speaking, when you talk about child development, you tend to identify kids who do badly in school as those who need the most help... but what her research suggests is that we might have to think about it in a broader sense.”

While most related studies have focused on the West, Dr Tilley said that youth in Asia could face similar challenges in high-pressure school settings.

She hopes the findings from her study will be helpful for top schools here, as well as for other Asian countries.

Dr Tilley had previously done a smaller study in Hong Kong which surfaced similar trends, but she said a larger project was needed to better understand the issue in Singapore’s context.

“What I found in Hong Kong was that females actually showed higher rates of anxiety and depression compared with males... But what isn’t very clear at this point is whether girls just tend to have more of these internalising problems than males in general, or if girls in high-achieving environments are particularly more at risk than their male schoolmates.”

Are girls more at risk?

Mr Narasimman Tivasiha Mani, who has been working with youth facing adversity for over 12 years, told ST that during their formative years, girls are more susceptible to stress due to fluctuating self-esteem, while boys often show inflated self-esteem.

Girls tend to show more inward-facing behaviours, known as internalising behaviours, while boys typically display behaviour more outwardly, he said.

Internalising behaviours often manifest as emotional distress, anxiety, or withdrawal. Externalising behaviours result in actions that impact the external world, such as aggression, rule-breaking or acting out. 

As the co-founder of Impart, a non-profit organisation that has helped more than 1,400 young people facing challenges, he has come across high-achieving students from top schools who often swing between intense study periods and indulging in risky behaviours to relieve stress.

These include binge-drinking sessions and unprotected sex, which are the result of mental health issues like burnout and depression.

“In these schools, there’s a lot more expectation... But some of it is not from parents. There’s a lot of self-expectation among youth, with what they feel they need to be doing,” said Mr Narasimman.

The NIE study could be useful in studying problematic behaviours among girls in high-achieving schools, but what comes after and the support given to this group of teens is more important, he added.

At the same time, Mr Narasimman said there is a need for tiered support, rather than simply imparting more mental health knowledge to students.

“Some benefit from having coaches and mentors to guide them. And not everybody needs a counsellor, or a clinical psychologist.”

He added that community-based approaches which involve activities other than speaking about mental health can also help youth cope with stress.

“Sometimes teens are not ready and may not even need to talk about their mental health symptoms to resolve them. They can do things like boxing, or other movement types of therapy. Just getting out there and doing work like that will help them.”

• Elisha Tushara is a correspondent at The Straits Times, specialising in Singapore’s education landscape.

Source: The Straits Times © SPH Media Limited. Permission required for reproduction. 

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