Nearly half of Mayo students say they will emigrate

Nearly half of Mayo students say they will emigrate


Anton McNulty

NEARLY a half of secondary students in Mayo believe they will have to emigrate at some point in the future with only eleven percent say they will not.
The revelation follows a survey of almost 5,000 Irish secondary school students by studyclix.ie for their Annual Student Sentiment Index, which focused on issues such as health and well-being, social media, phones and online habits, attitudes towards alcohol, study habits, future plans, Irish education and Ireland of today.
The answers were broken down by region, gender and class year of student and as well as the finding on emigration, the survey revealed that 27 percent of students surveyed from Mayo said they believe religion should be a compulsory subject in school. This is in comparison to the national average of 16 percent saying the same.
In relation to emigration, 48 percent of Mayo students surveyed stated they will have to emigrate at some point in the future with 41 percent saying maybe and only eleven percent saying no, they will not emigrate.

Difficulties
Commenting on the emigration findings, Studyclix co-founder Luke Saunders said he believes the figures were driven by their perception of the difficulties and challenges in finding work.
“I believe that this high percentage of students from Mayo who intend to emigrate or find work in another county is driven by their perception of the difficulty and challenges in finding work in their own county. Although I expected the result of emigrating in the future to be low in counties with cities like Dublin, Galway and Cork, I was surprised to find that counties such as Roscommon and Tipperary also had a low percentage of students saying they intended to emigrate,” he said.
Other findings in the survey found that 56 percent of students have admitted that school has been the most stressful thing in their life over the past year. Appearances and home life are placed joint second, with ten percent of students admitting how they look, or their family caused them the highest levels of stress.
Almost a quarter of students surveyed admit to not participating in any PE class during the week and three percent of students surveyed smoke.
Figures for alcohol consumption are higher with 42 percent of students surveyed revealing that they drink ‘regularly’.