Exam Pressure for GCSEs is crazy

[Sibsmum]

Am I BU ? I think that the pressure on teachers/ schools constant target setting and revising targets to tell the children that they are/ are not achieving what some nameless bod has said they should achieve, is taking a serious toll on the mental health of teachers and students alike.
The new gcse courses are really packed full and very difficult, esp the languages- anticipates a big drop off after GCSE.....
It just seems relentless pressure from day one of secondary school.
Just wondering what other people think?
We keep hearing about % rises of teens being referred by GP to mental health services.....could this be the overriding reason?

I think the job of a parent is to ensure that the child is feeling the appropriate amount of pressure. So that can be pushing a bit, or alternatively, it can be helping to relieve pressure if the school/child are applying too much.

A parent also needs, from a young age, to help their child build resilience.

I think excessive exam pressure doesn't help teen mental health, but other things such as social media have their part too.

I also think that when parents choose a school based primarily on results, without due regard to pastoral care, then they should not be surprised when the school turns out to be a pressurised academic hothouse.

Try the transfer test (old 11+) in northern ireland possibility the most ridiculously stressful situations 10/11 yr olds have to go through. Then there's the stigma of being thick if you don't do it or fail it. And the wonderful system of having to view all prospective schools first before kids gets their grades so showing them schools they may not get into. It's awful

i have one child doing gcses and one doing a levels this year.
i plannned that well didn't i?

they both seem okay...

gcse child has gone from saying 'i need to get all 9s ' to saying ' i need to get enough to get into sixth form'
a level child is doing their best to get their predicted grades and so get into uni
so much hanging in the balance....

I'll be taking my kids straight out of school if they start getting too stressed about this... it's not worth the mental health toll.
I got 15 A*s at GCSE... despite moving schools across the country after year ten and having to take two new GCSEs crammed into a year because they didnt do the ones I had been doing...
I didnt feel any pleasure at all at getting the results, in fact I was so convinced that I'd failed that I rang up to see if they were a mistake!
I suffered with bad mental health issues, left home and did not go to uni, ended up off my face on drugs and homeless for several years....
NOT WORTH IT AT ALL
If I'd just got a load of Cs I'd probably be in a much better position career wise than I am now because I might not have totally ruined my psychological state over it.

So I will be putting absolutely no pressure on my children at all.

My husbands family put no pressure on him, in fact wanted him to leave school at 16.. and he ended up being the first in his family to go to uni and has been very successful...

I do really worry about schools today.. government policy seems to fly in the face of everything teachers and psychologists say about how to educate children

I have nieces and nephews doing secondary, all 4 in different schools and two sitting GCSE exams this year, but the system seems to be the same and producing lots of pressure. One nephew is taking meds for anxiety and I wouldn't ever have had him down for a stress head. His mum my sil is beside herself and trying to drag him away from his studies to have a break , but he is feeling that he needs to work work work. is
Can someone explain this resilience thing to me? It seems to be about a lot and I don't understand it.?

Resilience is about being able to cope under pressure, to be pragmatic, to cope with the ups and downs of life, to see things in perspective.

You build resilience by building self confidence, allowing opportunities to fail, letting the child see adults fail and try again, encourage not giving up, praise trying over results, not seeing things as all or nothing, that kind of thing.

Easier said than done of course.

Thanks Teenx2
Lots of guides for new parents, but struggling to find much to help these parents of teens, that isn't years out of date or massively complex. Any ideas?

No, not really.

I am a teacher and I totally agree but it’s not just GCSEs it’s audits, meetings, reviews, book scrutiny’s ect.
Teaches hours are stretched over the limits, we do over our hours marking and planning. The system need to be totally reviewed as I know for a fact most of our teachers do 60 plus a week

Both social media and the British education system are continually telling British teens that they're not good enough - not pretty enough, not thin enough, not cool enough, not achieving enough. Is it any wonder that we have a mental health crisis on our hands?

I’m planning to leave teaching because there is no joy or inspiration in it anymore. It’s an exam conveyor belt from day one. I’m secondary but I’m appalled by the pressure and dreary curriculum that my children are experiencing in primary. None of it is fit for purpose.

Captain My DD2 is y9.
I think the stuff she is learning is on the whole pretty interesting. I think a lot of subjects are 'better' taught than when I was at school (eg humanities, arts, maths).

My main complaints would be (1) the need to teach to the test for English Lang GCSE and (2) the shear volume of content in GCSE science - it is doable but for less able pupils there is a hell of a lot.

I am old enough to have done O levels, so possibly I am less 'worried' about the new style GCSEs than parents who went through GCSEs when they were more coursework/modular exams.

Under the new style Grade 9-1 GCSEs, there is a double whammy of a massive increase in content and having to remember 2-3 years of work in a year end final exam.

A child might be academically able but not have the memory or exam technique or sheer nerves to sit through such a mammoth test with so much riding on it.

From years of letting my daughter get on with it, I am had to do helicopter parenting for the first time, just to get her through it doing the bare minimum.

Captain if you are feeling disillusioned at the teaching end, we sure are feeling it at the parent/student end. The pressure of getting through the vast syllabus just sucks all joy out of learning. If it is not on the syllabus, there is no point trying to read up because the time and brain cells are better spent on examinable content.

I assume we have Michael Gove to thank for all this.