Do you have a child doing their GCSE’s next year? This is how the pressure from school is affecting their future and what you can do to help.

Do you have a child doing their GCSE’s next year?

This is how the pressure from school is affecting their future and what you can do to help.

Nearly every child in the UK in years 10 and 11 will go back to school in September having at least one assembly a week on G.C.S.E and attainment, and a form period where teachers start of on one topic, but by the end of the 15 minutes in form… somehow, we have ended up talking about ambition and commitment.

Some clients reported feeling sick before the assemblies or form time!

How do I know this?

I worked in a secondary school for 2 years, in that school’s counselling provision team, I am now an adolescent therapist in private practice seeing young people who, most of the time, are anxious and wired about the G.C.S.E process.

“THIS IS YOUR LAST CHANCE TO GET IT RIGHT”

“IF YOU DON’T GET THE RESULTS, LET ME TELL YOU, YOU ARE ON THE BOTTOM OF THE PILE”

“EVERY EMPLOYER WILL FOCUS ON G.C.S.E S, FACT”

This is what most young people are hearing in school!

How is it helpful it to whip up such a frenzy that the young person either works themselves into the ground, or switches off completely? The children’s charity NSPCC has recently reported a surge in the amount of teenagers seeking help through their support services, specifically due to exam stress and anxiety. Don’t get me wrong the teachers are not to blame, the league tables are.

Once pupils return to school after the Christmas break in year 11 they pretty much have revision classes for every lesson, by the time the Easter break comes there has been 390 hours of revision completed, but for some schools this isn’t enough. Two different clients at different schools that I have worked with were actively encouraged to attend a revision week over the Easter break in school this year.

The predicted grade is a bug bear with my clients, they say it has no resemblance to their current capability and it sets up an expectation to parents which adds more pressure.

I’d just like to make the point that Finland send their children to school for the least number of hours a week than any other country in Europe, they also do not introduce any formal assessment or exam until they are age 17, and yet it is one of the top achieving countries of academia in Europe.

Believe me, the pressure starts at around March time in year 10 and builds like steam in a pressure cooker until exam season of year 11.

As a parent, can you remember the good old days of exams, when you sat out in the sun on exam leave and met up with your mates under the guise of group revision. This is unthinkable for the young person studying today. It is drilled into students that if they do have exam leave (not all schools do) most weekdays need to be filled with a solid five-hour session of revision.

The following are a list of things you can do to balance out the now internalised expectation of sleep, revise, eat, repeat.

·       Exam timetable – When the exam timetable is sent home, examine it and draw another one up with your teenager, less a quarter of the total revision time.

·       Distraction- If your teenager is forward thinking enough to admit that distraction onto social media is one of their problems in staying focused. You can use social media blockers such as https://freedom.to/ or http://antisocial.80pct.com/  while revising, so social media checking is not an option.

·       Varied activities – when anybody focuses on one thing constantly, perspective is lost. From January time onwards make a promise with your teenager that you will go to the cinema every couple of weeks and go for a walk ( a proper mapped walk) the other week. There is an old Zen saying “You should sit in nature for 20 minutes a day, unless you’re busy and then you should sit for an hour” You are looking to enjoy things that involve most of the senses. Swimming is also a good stress buster.

·       Fiction input – When teenagers enter years 10 and 11, they have tended to stop reading fiction, so they are either reading subject text books or they are on social media. At Christmas time do some research on a good book trilogy on amazon, buy it and give as a Christmas present and suggest half an hour before bed that their phone goes on airplane mode and they complete 20 minutes of reading.

·       Interruption- After a lengthy revision period, actively interrupt it and ask the young person to do something else…This is particularly relevant to perfectionist who can’t gauge when enough really is enough.

·       Choose what info to take in – nearer the time, friends will be saying how much they have revised, what mark they got in the mock. How well they did in a past paper, how they have done all the past papers for every subject EVER in the history of the universe. This is not helpful, and the sooner your child decides not to take it on board, tune out and get on with their own thing the better his/her anxiety levels will be.

Nearer the time of exams when there is high anxiety and they are cramming in revision, reassure you teenager that they can’t know what they don’t know. That they have done the most possible to raise the chances of success. Do a checklist

ü  Have they done past papers (still the best indicator of what will be on the exam)

ü  Have they stuck to YOUR revised revision timetable?

ü  Have they taken enough breaks so they have remained objective and feel relaxed but in control?

Then they can say they are prepared.

A last note to parents… It is important to remember that although we want the very best for our teenagers and we really want them to feel proud of their achievements, we also don’t want to get sucked into the school’s narrative. It is an important time yes, but what is equally important to remember is that it is just one aspect of the child. British education is not a holistic endeavour unfortunately. What matters even more than exams are our teenager’s mental health.

Photo Anthony Kelly