With many Year Elevens sitting mock exams this month, I asked two Year Tens (soon to follow in their footsteps) what they thought of exams. Lets call them Anna and Yasmina.
Anna is one of the youngest students in her year group. She does eight GCSEs, with sociology, Spanish and history as her options. When asked if she had any plan for the remaining year before GCSEs, her response was: ‘Revision. When I can be bothered.’
Despite this dismissive answer, she thought GCSEs were important and would have a massive effect on her future. She is tested often but is unsure about the benefits:
‘being tested can allow students to be prepared for exams but it can also put way too much pressure on you.'
But do exams show how clever and gifted you are? Anna’s answer was no, but she did not seem to know why she felt that way. A girl beside her suggested:
‘You could get stressed out or have a bad day?’
‘Yeah, exactly – what she said’ Anna laughed.
Unlike Anna, Yasmina does ten GCSEs and is one of the highest achieving students in her year group. Her options are often considered highly academic – besides the obligatory GCSEs, she does history, Mandarin and triple science. She is tested extremely frequently, between once and five times a fortnight. Yasmina was more decisive about the benefits of exams: ‘Honestly, I do think that being tested often is a good thing… if those tests are fair.’
As to whether exams were a measure of how clever someone was, she recalled Einstein’s famous quote: ‘if you judge a fish on its ability to climb a tree, it will spend its whole life thinking it is stupid.’
‘We all have our own sets of skills and traits and personalities which make us better at different things, so using exams to judge a person…isn’t quite right.’
I asked if she enjoyed school. This time, she was more doubtful. If things changed a bit, she said, she might enjoy it a little more.
‘The hardest part is probably the stressful revision, and teachers actually telling you not to stress out because you'll only do worse, which just makes you stress out even more’
‘Of course I’m worried about my GCSEs; I shouldn’t be really, because we have A-Levels which are even harder, but… GCSEs are a big stepping stone for the future because they show how determined you are from a young age, I suppose… how determined you are to get good grades and how that might affect your future. Its not more about scores and numbers that are written down but more about your passion and ambition at this stage.’
It seems that students sitting exams are the least certain of their consequences. Resentment against exams is widespread, but they are the best option we have in terms of measuring someone’s capabilities. Reducing the negative impact that exams have on students (such as stress) may be the best solution to this problem.
Emma Aarts
St. Mary Magdalene Academy
