What Exam Results tell us about Student Stress
A quick review of your school’s GCSE and A Level Exam Results should give an idea of the challenges students faced last summer in managing their exam stress.
Stress is a common factor during the exam season, but you can help students to get their fear under control with repeated practices that are both easy to teach, and easy to learn.
When you do a review of the part stress played in affecting your students’ results, you’ll be able to see where students became overwhelmed, and at what point they stopped being able to manage their feelings.
Once you, and they know the areas that spook them, they’ll be better able to manage how they respond.
You want your students to be able to stay calm and in control when it matters but this isn’t our natural way of reacting to difficult situations. Biologically, we’re wired to avoid things that triggers our panic.
Find the What problem
Finding out WHAT sets off personal fears around exams is key. It’s Step 1 in learning how to manage things better next exam season.
Start by doing a quick tally of the different trigger points in the exam process that you think showed in their exam results.
Figure out with them where individual students got unstuck and where they feel things unravelled for them.
Different things worry each of us, and we’ve all built up a pattern in how we respond to stress. Understanding something of students’ past experiences will help you understand the What and When for each of your anxious students.
It’ll help you build up a personal picture of where they’re likely to find things difficult next time round and this will help you be more aware of any unwelcome behavioural or emotional reactions.
There are likely to be common areas of challenge such as:
- Fear of the exam room
- Being in a room with their peers
- Self-confidence issues
- Memories of past failures and comments
- Worry about remembering
Your focus will be on identifying which of these areas (or others) are the personal panic points for your anxious students, and then helping design their own solution, so the same situation doesn’t affect their exam experience, in the future.
So having found what both the problem and the cause is, you’ll want to have a tested way of helping them handle their responses when these things come up next time.
And the best way to do that is to put a school-wide approach in place.
It should be an exam stress approach that every student-facing staff member is aware of, and confident in using.
Find the How Solution
Your aim is to find a stress-management solution for each student. Whilst many Mindful practices work in general, you’ll find your students may lean towards some exercises more than others.
That’s to be expected.
It’s why I recommend that once you work out How to help them and What practices they might choose from, you help them create a plan tailored to their personal preferences.
If you’re to learn, as a School what your 2024 Summer Exam Results are telling you, then you’ll want to put a different plan in place for 2025.
And that means introducing your new Exam Stress Management Plan as soon as possible into the new academic term.
You can’t expect students to change until they have 3 things in place:
- They see there’s a challenge
- They see what their options are
- And they get help in moving towards that
Your 2024 review can help you lean into learning new ways of doing things, if you’re prepared to dig a bit, with your students’ support.
Exam Stress is a Thinking, Being and Doing Problem. And it’s one that can be shifted with new thinking and new ways of responding to the problem.
Yes, it takes work, from everyone, but while there’s potential for change, as Educators, it’s something that’s worth our attention.
Download your guide to ‘Supporting your students with their Exam Stress’ so that they go from being Anxious and Overwhelmed to being Calm, Confident and in Control of their feelings. I’ll also sign you up to the Exam Reaction Plan waitlist