I spend a lot of my working life talking about how fulfilling learning is. It’s good for your health and wellbeing, it builds self-confidence and self-awareness, develops community cohesion and tolerance, makes people feel part of our society and helps people to succeed at work. There is even lots of evidence that lifelong learners will live longer and be happier. What’s not to like? Exams, revision and stress, that’s what.

As a father of three children, I have some personal experience of this. This week is exams week for my youngest, Matilda, who is halfway through her A levels at our local sixth-form college. She’s had a good year of learning and growing up. The train journey, the more flexible timetable, the attitude of the college to students as young adults rather than children, the mixing with a very large peer group (over 2,000 students) and the responsibilities to get her work done and get in on time have been great for her. She has thrived in the way that all parents want to see. She has also started on a lifelong learning journey, which will probably help her to succeed - with better health, wellbeing, happiness and work.

All of that is true, but it’s been hard to remember since the spectre of exams started to loom large a few weeks ago. Because of the unjust and unfair funding cuts (no rise in the 16-18 funding rates for five years now has led to inflation and new costs eroding the spending power dramatically) and Michael Gove’s desire for rigour, she is doing three linear A levels. No AS levels for her and most of her cohort means that she is stuck with her choices for two years rather than being able to do four courses and drop one after a year. No AS levels does of course mean no external exams this month, but the college is doing equivalents, as it should.

Exam sadists 

For Matilda and thousands of others, just as the mercury started to rise, the sun came out and the blossoms bloomed, revision became the order of the day. There’s something of the tragic when I see her sitting out in the garden having to work when I am relaxing with the paper and a coffee before a spell of gardening or a bike ride in the sunshine. What kind of sadists set exams in the most beautiful months of May and June? The very months when life is emerging from the dark winter, when hope and opportunity abound? When there are so many things you’d rather be doing?

But they are only internal college exams, of course, so surely that makes it easier? Well, maybe, but not for many young people. As a motivated and keen student, Matilda wants to do well, and is desperate to show what she can achieve. She’s competitive and knows she can do well, so the pressure comes from her as much as anywhere. Doing maths, biology and chemistry means she is also a minority in most classes full of boys, and the motivation to “show them” is part of the equation. All complex factors, of course, and particularly so for young people still going through enormous physical and emotional transitions, trying to work out who they are, what they like, what they want, what they can do, what is possible. No pressure then.

Mounting pressure

However much the rest of the family try to help, tell her that they are only internal exams, that the results are not that important, the pressure mounts. Before her GCSE exams last year, Matilda was repeatedly told that the next few weeks were “the most important of your whole lives”. No wonder we are seeing more stress among young people. Matilda’s OK and will cope, but it feels brutal, almost punitive. With the higher stakes now associated with exam results, it also feels as though it works better for certain abilities, personalities and for those with strong family support. It certainly doesn’t feel like the best way to test abilities and skills, even if it probably does test resilience to stress and the ability to focus. Rigorous it may be, but as to whether it is fair and justified - well, that’s another story altogether.

David Hughes is chief executive of the Association of Colleges