Exam Fever!!!! (From Surrey Comet)

Exam Fever!!!!

5:28pm Tuesday 8th June 2010 in Elmbridge

By Community Correspondent Rosie Morris

Exams. Even the word makes me shudder. GCSE’s, AS levels, SATs, internal examinations, A levels- a cacophony of horror which the entire young population are subjected to once every summer. Ever since we had SATs, back in the tranquil days of year six, every summer has turned from a time for relaxing in the sunshine and doing very little to a frenzy of revision timetables, practice papers and last minute cramming. Every conversation at school inevitably ends up with “how much revision have you done this week?” or “do you think we need to learn quadratic simultaneous equations for the exam?” and during any moment spent doing anything vaguely enjoyable a wave of guilt washes over you because you should be revising!

Surely this nightmarish state of events isn’t what the government intended? In my opinion, exams seem to be testing not our ability but our stress threshold and skills at cramming large amounts of information into our overloaded brains. Of course, everybody knows that we need exams, there’s got to be a way of separating the good from the bad and recognising achievement. We need qualifications to illustrate our abilities but I just don’t think the current system has quite cracked that. GCSE languages test how good you are at copying and regurgitating information, Sciences how well you’ve studied the good old “exam technique” and Maths your ability to solve insanely difficult algebraic equations with no relevance to anything in life.

Naturally, I’m not proposing that we abolish exams (although I spend half my life wishing that one day my headmistress will announce exams are cancelled in a Dumbledore-esque way!) but some alterations need to happen. Exams should be spread over the whole year to monitor your general performance and not just channelled into a few stressful weeks in the summer. We’d probably benefit from some more “surprise” elements in the exams to avoid learning strictly to the exam specification. I would also like to be taught things that aren’t on the exam once in a while as life isn’t all about exams! Some syllabuses should be changed to make their content more useful for later in life. For instance, I doubt knowing how to describe my opinions on environmental problems in French will help me out much or being able to change the subject of a formula will do me many favours.

Complaining aside, the only strategy for exam survival seems to be getting your head down and learning those facts. You may feel as if you’re being unnecessarily tortured but try to motivate yourself by imagining opening an envelope of great results. If all else fails, look on the bright side- the whole experience will be over this time next month! Banish those thoughts of “I’m going to fail everything!!!” get some early nights and keeps smiling!