How to beat exam stress with just the power of your brain

Stress is part of life. Too much stress, over a sustained period, is clearly damaging, but normally we can deal effectively with short bouts. In fact, while stress may be uncomfortable, it can actually be a key motivator and the right amount of it can help to boost our performance.

But there is a limit. Too much stress and the opposite tends to happen, leading our confidence and performance to decline at a rapid rate. The stress and performance relationship is often seen as an upside down “U” – as you get more stressed, your performance improves until you reach an optimum point – then it declines. In reality, it is more common for it to act as a motivator and then reach a sudden and severe drop – this is something I like to refer to as falling off the “fear cliff”.

Stress can easily turn to fear and what happens when fear raises its ugly head is twofold. First, all our good intentions go out the window and we snap back into our comfort zones. Second, we panic and believe that just because in the past we have made a mistake this is bound to happen again.

To avoid the “fear cliff” it is important to take a couple of steps back from the edge and think about your goals in advance. Set yourself realistic targets, two hours study may well be effective, but four hours is not twice as effective.

Research shows that the human brain can only effectively concentrate for about 45 minutes – after that your concentration levels dip. So make sure you plan breaks into your revision schedule. Split the day into hour-long chunks knowing that for the last 10-15 minutes of the hour you will have a break before you move on to your next topic.

Eight ways you can help your children revise

Whoever said that your school days are the best days of your life may have been a bit of a sadist. Either that or they weren’t ever part of the British education system. It’s no secret that children living in England are some of the most tested in the world, and with pupils as young as ten said to have been “left sobbing” after SATs tests in UK schools recently, it’s clear that exam pressure is something that starts early in the British isles.

But as much as most children (and parents) hate tests and revision, exam time is just another part of school life – and it doesn’t look like it’s going anywhere anytime soon. But the good news is that there are things you can do to help the exam period stay as stress free as possible – helping to keep door slamming and tears to a minimum.

1. Get ahead

In the run up to exam time, sit down together with your child and work out the best times for revision. Make a revision timetable on a big piece of paper and pin it up somewhere prominent. When it comes to revision,research shows that little and often is better than overlong sessions. Cramming at the last minute is also counterproductive, so it’s best to start early and put in the groundwork while there is still time.

2. Learn what works

We know that different people have different styles of learning, and it is important your child is working in the way that’s right for them. Find out what motivates them and use it to your advantage – be it an end goal, such as doing well in an exam, or building a skill, such as learning a language. But don’t use bribes. This puts undue pressure on your child, and sets the wrong precedent. They should want to achieve for their own sake, not yours or because there’s a cash reward in it.

3. Stay positive

During exam season, it can be all too easy for your child to forget that learning can actually be enjoyable. The field of positive psychology takes a “glass half full” approach to life, celebrating the positive rather than the negative. Looking at revision from this angle, there are numerous benefits, such as increased knowledge and working towards personal goals. It can also be an opportunity for you to support and help your child to achieve. Research has found that parental involvement in their child’s education has a significant positive effect, even into adulthood – so what you do now could make a big difference in the years to come.

How to help a perfectionist student

Starting a university is often a stressful time and can lead to perfectionist tendancies. If you 're a worried parent, here's how you can help.

Unmanageable to-do lists, working late into the night, an internal voice demanding success. These are all typical traits of a perfectionist student.

Myra Woolfson, of the University of Nottingham’s counselling service, says that perfectionists are often too overwhelmed by their own expectations to start work. “Perfectionism can lead to an almost complete withdrawal of study – and sometimes from everything else. It can involve procrastination until the deadline gets close,” she says.

“This behaviour is often not entirely conscious. One of the reasons for it is that the student can tell themselves that if they had worked harder or for longer, they might have achieved more.”

Many people spend their lives pursuing unattainable perfection. It’s a mission rooted in feelings of inferiority or the impact of bullying, says Woolfson. It could also be caused by a family that prioritises success and status or a school under pressure to deliver good grades. For self-confessed perfectionist Alice Lovatt, studying A-levels in Newcastle, it’s sibling rivalry: she wants to achieve at least as much as her sister.

“A perfectionist approach to studying is the only way I can succeed,” she says. “Errors mean failure, and failure means disappointment. Sometimes I worry that I need to learn how to fail and how to take to it better. If I was to suddenly suffer a slip in my standards it would come as a shock.”

The transition to higher education can be a turning point for perfectionists. Self-learning, independent living, a lack of structure, fewer and less obvious targets and more talented and competitive peers can all derail a student who has been used to excelling at school.

According to Alan Percy, head of counselling at the University of Oxford, perfectionism is “an increasingly insidious phenomenon” at UK universities. More students are taking smart drugs to get higher grades and universities are experiencing an increase in mental health problems. Meanwhile, the cost of tuition fees and living, along with the pressure to get jobs, can put strain on students.

How to have a healthy exam term

With exams fast approaching, here’s how to boost your mental and physical performance.

Many students are now in their final term of the academic year: all the hours spent attending classes, studying and revising culminate in the assignments and exams scheduled for the next couple of months.

With the pressure and stress of having so much to do, avoiding procrastination and getting work done efficiently can be more difficult than it seems. So with exams fast approaching, here are some tips to make your life easier and increase your productivity.

Sleep

Having a consistent sleeping pattern is one of the most essential things for getting through the term. Under- and over-sleeping are as bad as each other, so aim for between eight and 10 hours. Working through the night and sacrificing sleep can be counterproductive.

Students are using new methods to keep themselves well rested, such as binaural beats, a type of sound that can affect the brain. Prajesh Patel, 20, an economics student at Queen Mary, University of London, takes power naps consistently and is a fan of this technique.

“Binaural beats are particular frequencies that can be played through earphones to stimulate a particular brain state, such as studying or sleeping,” he says. “I take a 20-minute nap with the aid of a binaural beat soundtrack every day after lunch. I wake up refreshed and more focused to tackle the second half of my day.”

Diet

Food is also incredibly important, and maintaining a balanced diet will make you feel better and give you the right nutrients to work that little bit harder (pdf).

Coldwater fish, such as tuna and salmon, may not sound like a library-friendly snack, but they are a rich source of amino acids, which improve brain chemical levels and your ability to revise efficiently. Walnuts and flaxseed are also recommended, as they’re known for keeping attention spans under control.

Surge in young people seeking help for exam stress

NSPCC reports 200% rise in requests for counselling, with its ChildLine service receiving more than 34,000 approaches in 2013-14.

The number of young people in Britain seeking counselling over exam stress has increased by 200% in recent years, according to the child protection campaigners NSPCC, with worry over education one of the leading causes of concern for children.

The NSPCC said last year that its ChildLine service received record numbers of approaches from students worried about exams, with a tripling in the number of those receiving counselling over exam stress specifically.

In 2013-14 ChildLine said it received more than 34,000 approaches from young people over school worries such as revision, workloads, problems with teachers and other issues, putting education into the top 10 of most frequent concerns among users for the first time.

Where school and education was given as a young person’s main concern, more than half of subsequent counselling sessions dealt with exam stress specifically, a 200% increase compared with 2012-13.

The NSPCC also said that there were also more than 87,500 visits to ChildLine’s website over the same issue.

The charity said that one teenage boy told an adviser last year: “I am about to take my GCSEs and I am under so much pressure as my parents are expecting me to do really well. I am going to revision classes and trying really hard but I feel like it is not good enough for them.

“My parents don’t allow me to do anything else apart from revision and if I try and talk to them it always ends up in an argument.”

The figures came as hundreds of thousands of pupils prepare to sit GCSE exams in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, followed by many thousands more sitting A-levels.

Even at primary school, pupils in their final year are taking key stage two tests, followed by key stage one assessments for those in year two.

Children’s attention problems at age seven linked to lower GCSE grades

As thousands of 15 and 16-year-olds prepare for their GCSEs, new research has found that children who display inattentive behaviours at age seven are at risk of worse academic outcomes in these examinations. This was the case even after their IQ and their parents’ social and educational backgrounds were taken into account.

The results of our study, published in the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, were based on analyses of behavioural and academic data of participants in Children of the 90s, a population-based study at the University of Bristol. The research team, from the universities of Nottingham and Bristol, studied more than 11,000 children.

Childhood behaviour problems can be apparent to parents and teachers during the early years of primary school. These include difficulties such as inattention, poor concentration, being easily distracted, losing interest easily, daydreaming, not listening or being disorganised. They can also include oppositional or defiant behaviours, such as frequent temper tantrums, arguing with adults and not doing as adults ask.

Few representative large-scale studies have assessed whether these behaviours pose an independent risk for educational achievement during adolescence. It has not been clear whether the risk of lower grades from increasing levels of inattention applies across the whole population, or only for those children with the most severe problems, such as those with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).

In the study, parents and teachers completed questionnaires about the child’s behaviour at age seven. These assessed a range of different behaviours including inattention, hyperactivity/impulsivity and oppositional/defiant problems. This information was then compared with the children’s academic achievements by looking at their GCSE examination results at age 16. We also took the child’s IQ and parents’ education and socio-economic status into account as these are linked with both early behaviour problems and academic outcomes.

Real impact on grades

We looked at the impact on children’s GCSE results in two ways. First, we looked at how many had achieved five “good” GCSE grades – five A*-C grades including English and Maths. This is a minimum expected level to access further education and is a key indicator that is published in school league tables. We found that for each one-point increase in inattention symptoms (based on a full scale of 0-18) at age seven, there was a 6-7% increased likelihood, on average across the whole sample, of not achieving the minimum level of five “good” GCSE grades at age 16.

How to teach … revision

As the exam season gets underway, we bring you useful lesson plans and ideas for making revision as pain-free as possible.

The advent of spring and the approach of summer are accompanied in school by a less welcome prospect: exam season.

May marks the beginning of Sats in primary schools and the first swathe of GCSEs and A-levels – usually practical or oral tests – in secondary schools. So as teachers try to cajole students into knuckling down, this week’s how to teach explores revision and how to make it as productive and pain-free as possible.

Start by getting students to create their own revision timetables. Author and former teacher Nicola Morgan has created a useful template to help you do this. It covers the three weeks of revision and includes a section in which students can log their exams to ensure theyare organised. It advises students to write in any days they cannot revise to help them plan ahead and includes different wellbeing tips each day to help students cope. Advice for both students and parents is available on Nicola’s blog.

Staying calm and mindful during this time is important. Get your class to think about how they might be feeling with this resource which asks: are you stressed? It includes five multiple choice questions to help students recognise how they are responding to pressure.

The Guardian’s Matthew Jenkin examined the calming benefits of mindfulness in the classroom in an article last year, stating that, according to Katherine Weare, emeritus professor at the universities of Exeter and Southampton’s mood disorder centre, one of the most useful ways of practising calm reflection is to take a very short pause in the middle of a task. Invite “students to stop what they are doing, close their eyes and recognise what is happening in their mind and body right now,” Jenkin writes.

Meditation is another useful revision break. Religious education teacher Andrew Jones has a presentation on compassion meditation for beginners, aimed at 11- to 14-year-olds. It’s based on a classroom scheme of work on Buddhism, but can act as a standalone lesson too. There is also a calming meditation track from Clear Vision that can be used to instill calmness.

Five secrets to revising that can improve your grades

An expert on revision gives his top five tips on how to revise for exam success.

How do you get the most out of your revision time, and end up with the best grades you can? Or, if you're a different sort of student, how can you get the same grades you're getting now, but spend less time revising?

Either way, you need to know how to learn better. And fortunately, decades of research carried out by psychologists about learning and memory has produced some clear advice on doing just that.

As an experimental psychologist, I am especially interested in learning. Most research on learning is done in a lab, with volunteers who come in once or twice to learn simple skills or lists of words.

Wouldn't it be better, I thought, if we could study learning by looking at a skill people are practising anyway? And could we draw links between how people practise and how good they eventually get?

Computer games provide a great way to study learning: they are something people spend many hours practising, and they automatically record every action people take as they practise. Players even finish the game with a score that tells them how good they are.

Using data from a simple online game, my colleague Mike Dewar and I could analyse how more than 850,000 people learned to play. The resulting scientific paper, showed in unprecedented detail the shape of the learning curve, allowing us to test existing theories of learning, as well as suggesting some new ideas on the best ways to learn.

So here are my five evidence-based tips on how to learn:

1. Space your practice

Our analysis showed that people who leave longer gaps between practice attempts go on to score higher. In fact, the longer the gaps, the higher the scores.

The difference is huge: people who leave more than 24 hours between their first five attempts at the game and their second five attempts score as highly, on average, as people who have practiced 50% more than them.

Stress for success

Psychologists help anxious teens put their worries to good use

A pounding heart. Tense muscles. Sweat-beaded forehead. The sight of a coiled snake or a deep chasm might trigger such stress responses. These physical reactions signal that the body is prepared to deal with a life-threatening situation.

Many people, however, respond this way to things that cannot actually hurt them. Sitting down to take a test, for example, or walking into a party won’t kill you. Still, these kinds of situations can trigger a stress response that’s every bit as real as those provoked by, say, staring down a lion. What’s more, some people can experience such reactions simply by thinking about non-threatening events.

The uneasiness we feel when we think about, anticipate or plan for non-threatening events is called anxiety. Everyone experiences some anxiety. It’s perfectly normal to feel butterflies in your belly before standing up in front of the class. For some people, however, anxiety can become so overwhelming, they start to skip school or stop going out with friends. They even can become physically ill.

The good news: Anxiety experts have a number of techniques to help people control such overwhelming feelings. Even better, new research suggests that viewing stress as beneficial not only can reduce anxious feelings, but also help us to improve our performance on challenging tasks.

Why we worry

Anxiety is related to fear. Fear is the emotion we feel when we are faced with something dangerous, whether real or not. Information from any of the five senses — or even just our imagination — can trigger fear, explains Debra Hope. She is a psychologist who specializes in anxiety at the University of Nebraska in Lincoln.

Fear is what kept our ancestors alive when a rustle in the bushes turned out to be a lion. Talk about a useful emotion! Without fear, we wouldn’t even be here today. That is because as soon as the brain detects danger, it starts a cascade of chemical reactions, Hope explains. Nerve cells, also known as neurons, start signaling to each other. The brain releases hormones — chemicals that regulate bodily activities. These particular hormones ready the body to either fight or flee. That’s the evolutionary purpose of the stress response.

Exams have left my students incapable of thinking

The word ‘why’ fills them with dread and being asked their own views provokes panic. A book is a decoration, a thought is a distraction and an idea is irrelevant.

“How many sentences should I write? How big should I draw the diagram? Should I write my own opinion?” These are some of the questions my students asked me this morning. Looking at that sample, you might assume they are in primary school, but you would be wrong. I teach a humanities subject in an “outstanding” sixth-form college in an affluent area. My students are bright, engaged and well-behaved, but there is something missing: they cannot think.

“Is this a thinking lesson?”
Not only can they not think, they don’t realise that education is about thinking. In the same way some people claim that reading is a hobby, they see thinking as an exhausting activity, not the minimum requirement for education.

“What word should I use to start this sentence?”
Minds focused on the future and eyes trained on exams, anything unrelated to the syllabus is considered an irrelevant distraction. I was moved to write this by a conversation I had with one of my brightest students last week. In the middle of a lesson, she asked if I was going to give the class a summary sheet of answers.

“Er, no…” I responded, “I’m not going to spoon-feed you.”

“Oh,” she said. “But I like being spoon-fed.”

I felt winded. I don’t know where I got my love of learning from, but, thinking is freedom. The legacy of the Enlightenment. Thought is what separates us from animals, gives us human rights, protects us against groupthink, and enables us to create democracies, computers, music and comedy. I am immeasurably grateful that I have been encouraged to think, to satirise, to criticise. I have been asked questions, not given the answers. But all my students want to do is blindly copy down information.

“Which category does that belong to?”
They lack creativity, not just in how they deal with the content of what they are learning, but in the process of learning itself. They will not make a mark on their paper unless I tell them to, or highlight a sentence without my permission; they won’t even start a new paragraph without checking first. They don’t understand that learning is thinking.

Better Ways to Learn

Credit Stuart Bradford

Does a good grade always mean a student has learned the material? And does a bad grade mean a student just needs to study more?

In the new book “How We Learn: The Surprising Truth About When, Where, and Why It Happens” (Random House), Benedict Carey, a science reporter for The New York Times, challenges the notion that a high test score equals true learning. He argues that although a good grade may be achieved in the short term by cramming for an exam, chances are that most of the information will be quickly lost. Indeed, he argues, most students probably don’t need to study more — just smarter.

Mr. Carey offers students old and young a new blueprint for learning based on decades of brain science, memory tests and learning studies. He upends the notion that “hitting the books” is all that is required to be a successful student, and instead offers a detailed exploration of the brain to reveal exactly how we learn, and how we can maximize that potential.

“Most of us study and hope we are doing it right,” Mr. Carey says. “But we tend to have a static and narrow notion of how learning should happen.”

For starters, long and focused study sessions may seem productive, but chances are you are spending most of your brainpower on trying to maintain your concentration for a long period of time. That doesn’t leave a lot of brain energy for learning.

“It’s hard to sit there and push yourself for hours,” Mr. Carey says. “You’re spending a lot of effort just staying there, when there are other ways to make the learning more efficient, fun and interesting.”

The first step toward better learning is to simply change your study environment from time to time. Rather than sitting at your desk or the kitchen table studying for hours, finding some new scenery will create new associations in your brain and make it easier to recall information later.

Exam pressure is driving more teens to eating disorders and self-harm

Child psychologist Professor Tanya Byron hits out.

Growing numbers of teenagers are suffering from eating disorders and self-harm due to the pressure of exams, leading child psychologist Professor Tanya Byron has said.

In an address to the Girls’ School Association in London, she said she was astonished at the attitude of some parents who were worried that treating disorders might interfere or interrupt exam preparation.

“Parents are often very concerned and shocked at how any treatment may impact on their child’s continued preparation for exams,” she added. “For instance, you may tell them that their child may not be able to do her GCSEs at present.”

Parents’ attitudes can cause “incredible damage” to their child, she said.

Professor Byron said that self-harm amongst boys was also increasing, and that even the children of “aspirational middle class parents” were vulnerable.

“It is absolutely heart-breaking and it is increasing,” she added.

Authors, teachers and parents launch revolt over 'exam factory' schools

More than 400 children’s writers, parents and teachers have signed a letter to The Independent expressing concern over the anxiety caused to children by the ever-higher stakes of so-called “exam factories”.

The signatories – who include the author and former Children’s Laureate Michael Rosen, as well as child development expert Sue Palmer and parenting writer Sue Cowley – say they are “increasingly concerned at the pressure that is being placed on our children”, especially by the testing regime.

The concerns have tapped into a storm of debate about the nature of schooling, after the CBI’s director general, John Cridland, recently called for a move away from the “exam factory” model of education towards pupils getting a more “rounded and grounded education” for their own sakes and for that of the economy.

At the heart of the letter’s complaint are the effects on children and teachers alike of the slew of exams crammed into school time, causing anxiety for pupils and leaving headteachers fearing dismissal if they fail to meet minimum government targets.

READ MORE: A teacher speaks out: 'I'm effectively being forced out of a career that I wanted to love'

The letter states: “We are concerned to hear of children crying on their way to school, upset that they will not be able to keep up: of parents worried that their four-year-olds are ‘falling behind’ or of six-year-olds scared that ‘they might not get a good job’ … And we wonder what has happened to that short period in our lives known as ‘childhood’.” 

 

Already, children take a compulsory reading test at the end of their first year in compulsory education – the phonics check for all six-year-olds. But from next September they will also have a “baseline assessment” upon arrival at school, aged four or five, in counting and letter and picture recognition amongst other skills. These tests are aimed at helping show how much primary schools have improved individual pupils’ performance by the age of 11.

Debate education efficiency, but don’t rank countries on it

There has been a recent explosion of interest in the effectiveness of education systems around the world, largely driven by international studies that compare the performance of large samples of students from a wide range of countries.

Such comparisons made in these studies such as the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) or other international reading and maths tests, have become a key factor in educational policymaking across the world.

Of course, how well children perform in maths and reading tests is not the only important aspect of an education system. In a resource-constrained environment, the costs of a good education cannot be ignored. In that sense, a new report by GEMS Education Solutions, the London-based consultancy wing of Dubai-based company GEMS Education which runs schools around the world, is certainly likely to spark debate around both the efficiency and effectiveness of education systems. But such a ranking is very problematic.

The authors of the Efficiency Index have used scores on the PISA tests and related these to (financial) inputs into the education system, of which they find two – teacher salaries and class size – to be significant.

The index is therefore a measure of how good a country’s pupils score on the PISA test, given how much (or little) a country spends on its teachers. Using these variables, the authors calculate an index for each of the 30 countries they studied, and rank them according to the efficiency index.

Finland, Korea, the Czech Republic, Hungary and Japan do particularly well, and the UK ends up in the top half of the table.

Why Finland, Korea and Czech Republic get the most bang for their educational buck

There are around 1.3 billion children enrolled in primary and secondary schools worldwide. Each year, governments spend trillions of dollars on their education systems with the objective of educating children to the highest possible standard.

Some governments use available budgets more efficiently than others. A new report which I co-authored called the Efficiency Index, published by London-based education consultancy GEMS Education Solutions, has highlighted which countries are using these most effectively to produce the best educational outcomes for their young people. Finland, Korea and the Czech Republic come out on top of the 30-country list.

The Efficiency Index is particularly relevant in the context of economic recession. In most countries, public expenditure on school education represents a significant share of total government budget.

The global proportion of government spending on education has, on average, risen for the past 20 years despite competition with other public sectors such as health, transport and defence. Yet there are potentially large financial savings to be made if we can better understand the underlying relationship between resource inputs and pupil performance.

Best scores per buck

Using econometric methods, our report examined data from 30 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries to ascertain which inputs funded by governments really do make a difference. It also looked at which countries are combining these inputs most effectively to produce the best educational outcomes for each dollar invested. The results are based on internationally comparable data collected over the last 15 years, using standardised scores from the OECD’s Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA).

A Levels must do more than just prep students for university

The first lessons teaching the new linear A Level, designed specifically with the preparation of students for degree-level education in mind, will be taught in schools and colleges from September 2015. But this does not mean that we can expect those students admitted to university from 2017 to be significantly better prepared for our degree courses than they have been previously. This is not because of any fault with the A Level content, but because the idea that they are designed primarily to prepare students for degree-level courses is rather outdated.

Nicky Morgan, the new secretary of state for education, will be responsible for overseeing the introduction of the new A levels. One of her first acts in post was to announce a consultation on further content changes. But the changes are unmistakably the product of her predecessor Michael Gove.

In Gove’s view – set out in a letter to the chief executive of curriculums regulator Oqual in January 2013 – A levels needed reforming so that their “primary purpose” would be to “prepare students for degree-level study”, something which he believed the previous modular nature of the qualification and repeated assessment windows did not allow. Gove argued that this bite-sized approach prevented students from developing the “deep understanding or the necessary skills to make connections between topics.”

The government’s own data reveals that in 2012-13, 48% of those who took an A level or equivalent level qualification did not go on to university. Figures for last year have been delayed until the end of August. To lump all degree-level courses together as something which a single qualification can prepare for is naive at best.

Academics warn international school league tables are killing 'joy of learning'

Nearly 100 educationalists from around the world sign letter attacking the OECD's Pisa rankings and say the next round of tests should be cancelled.

Read the academics' letter here.

Governments around the world anxiously await the results of the triennial tests of 15-year-olds carried out by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). Education ministers pray their nation's youngsters will climb the international league tables. Around half the countries that take part (66 in 2012) have made significant school reforms in the light of the results.

When the latest scores in the Programme for International Student Assessment (Pisa), as the testing regime is called, were published in December, England came 26th in maths, 23rd in reading and 21st in science. (The UK's overall performance was similar.) Michael Gove said the results "eloquently" made the case for a more academic curriculum, more rigorous exams, more academies and free schools, and other reforms introduced by the coalition. His junior minister, Liz Truss, went to Shanghai in China, which topped the league tables in all subjects – with Hong Kong and Singapore runners-up – to discover the secrets of its success. Chinese maths teachers have been invited to Britain to give "masterclasses" in teaching the subject.

Now nearly 100 leading educational figures from around the world have issued an unprecedented challenge to Pisa – and what they call "the negative consequences" of its rankings – in a letter to its director, Andreas Schleicher. The signatories include top academics from Cambridge, Oxford, London, Bristol, Stanford (California), Columbia (New York), Ballarat (Australia), Canterbury (New Zealand) and Stockholm universities.

South African education still fails many 20 years after apartheid

Since the dawn of democracy in South Africa 20 years ago, pass rates in the country’s end-of-school exam – commonly known as the matric – have been steadily on the rise, despite indications that the schooling system is failing in many other respects.Sceptics have indicated that it seems especially convenient that the 78.2% pass rate for Grade 12 students this year – an election year – exceeded the target of 75%. But Umalusi (the independent quality assurance body overseeing assessments in the schooling system) declared the 2013 National Senior Certificate (NSC) examinations to be fair and credible. And the indications are that the steadily increasing pass rate is not because examination papers are getting progressively easier.

Are standards improving?

It is important to be clear about exactly what is meant by “rising” pass rates. The rate is calculated by only those Grade 12 learners who actually sat the exams. Although the number has increased steadily over the years, data from the census has led to estimates that only 48% of students who begin Grade 1 actually complete Grade 12, with most learners dropping out of school in Grade 10 and 11.

How to teach … coping with exam stress

As exam season hots up, we have a range of lesson ideas and resources to help teachers ensure students keep their cool.

 

 

There are some lucky people who relish exams. They enjoy the pressure and, in some bizarre way, it brings out the best in them.

For the rest of us mere mortals, however, tests are a source of anxiety and stress.
At a time when schools are already struggling to cope with demand for support as councils cut their youth mental health services provision, it's even more essential that this year's exam season goes as smoothly as possible.

So as exam season hots up, we have a range of lesson ideas and resources to help you ensure your students keep cool.
One of pupils' main worries is that they won't be able to remember everything when they get into the exam hall, according to Elevate Education, an organisation that offers study skills advice. It recommends a number of techniques to help settle students' nerves including: creating mind maps of information rather than writing out notes over and over again; explaining a topic to a parent or friend; and avoiding a last-minute cram outside the exam hall because it will only lead to higher levels of stress.

Jim's Exam Advice is a list of practical tips on preparing for and performing well in exams. Suggestions include getting a good sleep the night before – assuming your anxiety allows – and doing your "best" question first to create a feel good factor. The list of tips could act as a handy stimulus for a discussion about techniques that pupils find effective. Then, working in groups, ask them to create advice guides of their own. They could even write a revision rap (as I remember doing in my year 11 English class. I can still hear the first lines of it: "Don't be a dope, get down to that revision, instead of being lazy, and watching television.")

Are we focusing too much on examining practical science?

Science evokes images of Bunsen burners, coloured liquids, vapours rising from flasks, white coats and safety goggles. But are we making too much of the rigid assessment of the practical parts of science in our school curriculum?

Ofqual, the examination regulatory body, has announced that practical work will no longer count towards the final examination grade in A levels. This has happened despite intense opposition from science teachers and learned scientific bodies, represented by SCORE. How can we say that a student has achieved any level of competence in a subject if a key skill is not being assessed, they argue?

The reason for the removal of the practical work from the final grade is based mainly on two issues. First, what was examined at GCSE and A level had become a joke. The set list of practical activities that constituted independent skills assessments and controlled assessments at A level were as relevant to real science as a banana is to a fish.

They were regularly abused and students routinely scored high marks as the system was exploited to bump up grades. As yet, no decision has been made on how, or even if, practical skills will be a part of the overall GCSE grade.