In the run-up to exam season, how often do you tell pupils to “do their best”?
It’s a phrase that clinical psychologist Dr Tara Porter says you should think twice before using.
“We’ve reached a boiling point where ‘doing your best’ means doing every single extension of homework that a teacher even mentions,” she says.
Porter describes one teenager she worked with during the summer between Years 10 and 11. She was setting an alarm really early, constantly working through a neverending list of things to do. On the first day of school in September, the teacher told the class that Year 11 was a really important year, and that they all had to work harder.
“She was already working so incredibly hard. To her this meant that she had to get up at a quarter to five, have a book next to her bed, have her room covered in exam planners and posters of everything she needed to know,” says Porter. “I think what ‘doing your best’ means has just changed over a generation.”
Listen to more Tes Podagogy:
The alternative, Porter says, is encouraging students to have a good life, and explaining that we’re all on a different path, that there isn’t a mythical “best” everyone needs to reach.
“We’re all finding what we’re good at, what we like, what we enjoy, what’s going to work for us. That’s the kind of language that I try to use,” she adds.
It’s vital that teachers choose their words carefully around exam season, in particular, because extreme exam anxiety is getting worse, Porter explains.
In this week’s Tes Podagogy podcast, she says that it’s not just the confusion around exams in the last two years that has had mental health implications for young people, but also the historic language that we use around GCSEs and A levels.
“The current Year 11 and Year 13 had all of their syllabus over the last couple of years disrupted, they would have been in Year 9 and Year 11 when [the pandemic] started two years ago,” she says.
“That is incredibly anxiety-provoking in the context of the GCSEs and A levels being talked about as the pinnacle of their education from when they enter secondary school. It’s that context that we have to look at.”
Even in Year 7, she says, when the focus should be on how a child is settling into secondary school, emphasis is too often being placed on how they might perform in their GCSEs.
“When we’ve got an education system that puts all of us, schools, headteachers, teachers, parents and young people under pressure for years and years and years that these exams are the be-all and end-all, the most important thing, it is an incredibly anxiety-provoking situation,” she says.
In the podcast, Porter goes on to discuss how exam anxiety can differ between boys and girls, and how teachers can support young people during this time.
Dr Tara Porter’s new book You Don’t understand Me: The Young Woman’s Guide to Life is out now
