Do examinations help?

Examinations are meant to measure a student's progress. 

But sometimes preparing can break a person before they even sit them...

GCSEs and A-levels make up the core examinations and points of a student's life. Being arguably the two most important tests a student will face before leaving school, they help to decide university applications, colleges and even job applications. What you learn on the courses which prepare you for the examinations are potentially pointers towards a career path - all huge pressure to overcome during and before exam season.

It is an overwhelming feeling to know that you must sit a few exams which may decide your future - every decision leading up to the point where you have a result counts. However, stress overcomes lots of people, but the problem isn't just a burden of work or life balance; it's expectation that works undercover to drive people insane.

Parents who have high expectations for their children are often good indicators of a high family work ethic, but also drastically increase pressure on their children to do well and reach higher than average standards.

On an international survey based on university expectations from different race/ethnicities, an OECD study found that East Asian parents had around a 90% expectation for their child to eventually attend further educations, closely followed by 83% for South Asian parents.

In these ethnic groups, students whose parents expected university were actually more likely to achieve it, which could be due to higher parental standards and a more tough work ethic compared to ethinic groups where parents didn't expect their child to attend university.

According to surveys conducted by YoungMinds, 15% of people stopped going to school or went less often due to struggling with exams whilst nearly 15% had suicidal thoughts which were linked to exam pressure. This strongly suggests that exams take their toll heavily on many young people, with negative perceptions from young shaping how they see examinations and what they mean to them.

Rising exam stress was also reported by Childline, from 2024 - 2025 data. There were 1647 calls, which peaked during May as exams began, with teens reporting loss of sleep due to stress and worrying about disappointing parents or teachers. Exam stress is of course a normal thing but many of these calls were eventually based on additional pressure from their parents and teachers. Other themes noted in the calls were anxiety, burnout and fear of failure.

There is lots of evidence that exams put pressure on young people to do well and succeed, but often there is not a way to simply calm someone down, especially when there are many reasons to feel anxious.

But "bottling up" emotions never helps - the exams won't disappear and suddenly become optional - and there is always time to feel worried, as long as you don't let it become your reality.

Sometimes, it can be best to let your emotions out.

Written by Creator J 

on 27/05/2026