With the exams returning this year, and the knock-on effects under scrutiny, there can be no doubt that the first set of summer national assessments in three years will take its toll.
From our own experience, we’ve had incredibly talented students pull out at this late stage in the year due to fatigue, anxiety or stress, rightly putting their own wellbeing before grades.
This blog post serves not as a debate or discussion on whether holding these exams are right or not: we’ve been through two tumultuous years of summer assessments (with the added strain of trying to avoid biases and the potential of parent pressure), and I’m sure another like that of 2020 or 2021 would see the back of an even greater number of teachers than is leaving the profession. Part of me felt that the CAGs and TAGs had their merits, but another part of me is pleased to see the return to normalcy of standardised tests - and I’m sure that many will agree with that summation.
Love them or loathe them, Nadhim Zahawi has made clear that exams will return and are here to stay, and so, I’ll explain here what I feel can be drawn from them, and how we do our best to support students who are about to undergo them. This is not the time to suggest alternatives, because, to put it simply, I don’t have any which are easy to implement, and the last two years mean I’m more happy to have them back than not. To put it bluntly, exams are the least worst way of determining who accesses the next level of education or employment.
There are a number of good points made by a former Education Secretary, Damien Hinds, who served before the stormy times of Gavin Williamson, in his article “Exams prepare pupils for the tests that life throws at them”. While he accepted that exams were stressful and had “a disproportionate effect on young people’s wellbeing”, he claimed that this stress was important in “building character” and “developing the resilience and coping mechanisms to deal with challenging experiences”.
I agree with much of what he states - and maintaining, certainly within the mind of students, the sense of a balanced nature in their approach to exams is a tightrope which has been in existence since exams came into being. It does seem, however, that the tightrope seems to be getting higher and thinner each year, with increased pressure making the journey over it fraught with danger.
As I’ve mentioned above, we’ve already had two students withdraw this year through stress and anxiety. My hope is that they will return when they are ready to, but I can’t be sure of this. When they made their plans clear, I gave them the time and space required to think over their decisions and then acceded without any meaningful pressure to make them rethink. They had reached their breaking point, and decided that it was time to get out - a brave decision, and one which deserves credit as it prioritises their health.
I grew up in quite a tough area, and you had to thrive to move out and up. I am ever-thankful to my parents for instilling in me the values of resilience to do so. Throughout my life, and I’ve tried to make this clear to the students here, lies the realisation that everybody has stress, and some of us have far more damaging stress than others.
Where is next month's rent coming from?
How will I pay for these rising energy bills?
How can I tell my wife that I have lost my job?
Will I ever come to terms with who I really am?
In a survey by the children’s commissioner for England, two-thirds of children ranked homework and exams as their greatest cause of stress, and so it should be. If marks aren't at the top of the list something is wrong, be that that the student in question may have anxieties caused by other issues like bullying or the feeling that they don’t feel part of a school or college community.
Stress is a daily challenge, and students need to be well informed that life gets more difficult, with more complexities, as one gets older. The American author Steve Maraboli coined a wonderful phrase which takes a positive approach to this problem:
“Life doesn’t get easier or more forgiving, we get stronger and more resilient.”
This is exactly the approach which we take at Ealing Independent College. The destiny of a student is in their hands, and we try to guide them towards a resilient approach wherever we can. This, really, is based on the strong relationships we have here between students and staff, but we are relentless in our pursuit of the transference of resilient habits to the young men and women at the College.
Firstly, we try to ensure that they understand what resilience is - and that it is not an elusive trait in anyone. It is something which grows as a person grows, and something which they can master.
Secondly, we look to develop mindsets, so that students can adapt their emotional processes towards managing stress. Coping strategies and methods of self-regulation are embedded.
Then, we ask them to take responsibility - to take the right decisions, not the easy ones, whilst utilising the supportive community around them - peers, teachers and parents - all play a part in their development.
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, students need to see that the most important relationship which they will have in their lives is with themselves. Based around this, self-care is vital. This may seem incredibly basic, but these values, in some cases, are not always in place amongst the students when they first arrive at Ealing: good hygiene; an organised approach; maintaining a balanced and healthy diet; keeping their lives ‘tidy’ and free of clutter; avoiding negative self talk; regulating their use of their phones and social media; keeping a regular routine of exercise.
Only from this point can students really start to challenge themselves, to push the boundaries to see how far they can truly go in life. At this point, they will have determined their core values - their ‘why’ - a concept explained excellently by leadership coach Simon Sinek.
They may well have setbacks in trying to achieve this goal, and poor performance in exams this summer could well be one of those setbacks, but students also need to understand that one bad result does not determine their entire life going forward. There are numerous examples of people who have gone through crushing disappointment, but have used it to motivate themselves onto far greater things.
Resilience is written in the DNA of many EIC students, who have joined to recover from setbacks at former schools, or poor previous performance. They are taught here to embrace that ethic, to nurture it and to celebrate it.
We seek to encourage not quite an unbreakable spirit, but not far off.