《TAIPEI TIMES》 Many students anxious on return to

By Sherry Hsiao / Staff reporter

About one-quarter of students said that they felt anxious about returning to school following the summer break, a King Car Culture and Education Foundation survey released yesterday showed.

Of those respondents, 13.3 percent said that they were “very anxious” and 11.8 percent said they were “extremely anxious.”

When asked how they felt about their experiences during the summer vacation, 41.5 percent of students said they were happy, 34.9 percent said they felt bored, 7.3 percent said they were busy and 16.3 percent said they wanted to go back to school ahead of time, the survey showed.

Asked who planned their summer activities this year, 69.5 percent of students said they decided on their own, 12 percent said that their parents or other family members decided for them, while 18.5 percent said that they and their parents or other family members discussed and decided their schedule together, it showed.

The foundation asked students to select up to three activities from a list of 13 that they most often engaged in during July when a nationwide level 3 COVID-19 alert was in effect.

The most popular answer, selected by 59.6 percent of students, was binge-watching TV shows, the survey found.

That was followed by 58.2 percent who said they played online games and 40.3 percent who said they listened to music, it found.

Meanwhile, 16.8 percent of students said that they engaged in outdoor recreation last month, after the nationwide COVID-19 alert had been downgraded to level 2, the survey showed.

That was up from 6.8 percent of students who said they did outdoor recreation in July, it showed.

Summer vacations give children more opportunities to engage with people and do activities outside of school, foundation executive director Joyce Tseng （曾清芸） told a news conference in Taipei.

Participating in meaningful recreational activities can benefit the learning and development of students, she said.

Due to the impact of a local COVID-19 outbreak in May, many activities were not possible this summer, Tseng said, adding that developing in students a positive attitude toward recreation continues to be important.

The survey targeting students from grade five to 12 was carried out online from Aug. 30 to Sept. 15.

It was designed in collaboration with National Taipei University’s Department of Social Work, collected 7,444 responses, and had a confidence level of 97 percent and a margin of error of 3 percentage points, the foundation said.

新聞來源：TAIPEI TIMES