Why exams are good for you

School sucks. Early mornings, double maths, running round freezing-cold sports pitches — the thought of doing it all again makes me break out in a nervous sweat. Once a month or so, I have the same nightmare: it’s sixth form, and my exam results are in my hands. In my real life, my dad entered into a classic girls’ school bribe. If I got full marks in the IB, he’d pay for my nose job. I met my side of the bargain — but by 18, I’d grown into my bumpy nose anyway.

I do not envy those going back to school this week. Up and down the country, boys and girls will be packing their pencil cases, slipping into stiff new shoes and wriggling into too-big blazers. And that’s if they can face going into school at all: attendance remains dramatically lower than before Covid — in the last school year, 18% of students were persistently absent compared to 11% pre-pandemic. A flustered education secretary, Bridget Phillipson, appealed to parents on Sunday to “double down” on getting their children into classrooms. She told BBC Breakfast, with no small note of desperation: “If children miss a day or two in the first couple of weeks of term, they’re more likely to go on to be persistently absent.” But is it ever that simple?

Part of the problem is a post-Covid irreverence for formal education: last year, record fines were issued to crafty parents for pulling their children out of class for unauthorised holidays. But the greater issue seems to be a crisis of confidence. Last week, a survey of 16- and 17-year-olds in The Sunday Times found that nearly 70% of girls surveyed had skipped school because they felt anxious. Boys and girls both reported struggling “with social interaction” after lockdowns. It would be easy for those of us who sailed through the system to disdain these troubled teens as wimps — but I wouldn’t want to be their age today. Would you?

It seems to me that the root of the problem has been misidentified. Too often, exams are cast as the villain. For the past half decade, children have been deemed unable to cope with an assessment system which has existed in roughly its present form for generations. The solution, inevitably, is to lower expectations. A common refrain is that the exam system is no longer “fit for purpose”; variations on this theme appeared again and again under TikTok videos of trembling teens opening envelopes on GCSE results day two weeks ago. A small number went viral when pupils received straight 9s — but the biggest hits were the videos of pupils who gigaflopped. A shocking number failed to pass a single subject; many barely seemed to care beyond the inconvenience of compulsory resits in maths and English. For most, the whole affair seemed to be a massive joke. The exam format — limited time, silent halls, memorising facts and quotations — didn’t seem to be the issue. Rather, it appeared that these children had lost respect for the system itself.

In this, they are validated by condescension from ministers. One proposal made in Labour’s interim curriculum review in March was for pupils to sit fewer exams, as well as increasing “diversity and inclusion across the curriculum so all children can see themselves reflected in textbooks and lesson materials”. Nixed exams means the inevitable inclusion of more coursework modules, which would be a huge misstep. I can only assume that ministers intend to punish examiners for being mean to hyperventilating candidates by forcing them to sift through reams of AI-generated slop. If this is the case, an emphasis on coursework is an excellent approach. If, instead, they want to encourage pupils to learn, remember and apply information and receive directly proportional rewards for their hard work, timed, closed-book exams are simply the only option.

Much opprobrium has been directed at our supposedly “Victorian” examination regime, which critics deride as being about mindlessly regurgitating useless information. But as a former tutor, I know that a handful of mathematical formulas, chemical symbols and quotes from Shakespeare can only get you so far: exam performance is less about memorising in volume than applying knowledge critically. Scrapping exams unfairly disadvantages the brightest pupils who should have the opportunity to showcase their hard work, and who in a “kinder” system would be dragged down to the dumbest denominator in a boggy playing field rigged by ChatGPT. Michael Gove’s decision as education secretary to ditch much coursework and toughen up GCSEs and A Levels was a response to concerns about cheating and the wasting of teachers’ time; these concerns are even more material now, at a time when cheating is far easier, and when teachers spend more and more time wrangling pupils’ behavioural issues. Of course, the biggest disadvantage of exams is conferred on those pupils who are consistently absent from school; ensuring individual support for these children has to be a priority.

More than a decade after Gove’s reforms, Phillipson blamed “high-stakes” GCSEs for harming teens’ “wellbeing”. Her comment, made in March, was met with horror — one former head of Ofsted expressed fears of the schooling system “levelling down”. The Education Secretary was no doubt egged on by bodies like the mental health charity Young Minds, which has even called for SATs, which are taken in primary school, to be scrapped. Such a policy would mean that children wouldn’t undergo compulsory formal assessment until their mid-teens. How is this supposed to help them cope when they do encounter an exam hall? The charity has also called for “portfolios, project work and presentations” to replace written papers. One Young Mind representative wrote in Women’s Health in June about how this approach could have stopped her spiralling into panic attacks during her own GCSEs. She dolefully reported: “Our socialising turned into library meet-ups, where we’d sit staring at our laptops, completely overwhelmed.” But should this not be what the summer term of Year 11 looks like? She concludes: “No child going through the chaos of adolescence should face the pressure to secure their future by answering questions for one hour in a cold sports hall.” Exams are intimidating and miserable, sure. But how else can children be set on the correct academic path?

For happy and confident children, pressure is a good thing. Those children who are not happy and confident should be given more support, not denied ambition at all. An entirely bubble-wrapped approach, one of participation prizes and grading generous or vague enough not to make anybody feel down and out, does not foster brilliance, nor does it encourage the middling to strive. The answer is not to lower educational standards, but to get children to a place where they can meet them. Tackling absenteeism with mental-health counselling and well-paid, time-rich teachers has to be the place to start. Exams results are the evidence of years of work and nurturing, which requires a functional and well-run schooling system; scrapping them is a way for Labour to avoid showing its own homework.

Epitomising the shift from performance to pastoralism in the Independent earlier this year, the former head of both Epsom College and Wellington College, Anthony Seldon, wrote that 2025’s school system was “failing one-third of our young people by not recognising their intrinsic gifts and qualities, instead telling them that they have failed at GCSE”. The risk, he continued, was of ingraining a “self-fulfilling sense of incompetence”. But it would seem this destiny of “incompetence” has already been fulfilled: just last month, The Times reported that A-Level pupils were being given lessons in how to make a phone call in case they might need to ring up Clearing to beg for a university place having missed their grades. It seems our education leaders are doomed to waddle behind this anxious generation, like a guilt-wracked parent forever waiting for a toddler to stumble and bang their head. With such an approach, how can these kids ever learn to walk?

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