English Bac Would Heighten Anxiety

I've been reading with interest recently the GCSE assessment shake-up proposed by Michael Gove which, if the same Government are in power, will take place in 2017.  To sum up, in the core subjects of English, maths and science, all current forms of assessment would be replaced by one long final exam, which would be weighted at 100% of the total GCSE grade.



They were this big...

Now, I have always been hopeless at exams.  For almost every subject I ever took, I always got a higher mark for the coursework than I got for the exam.  One of the main reasons for choosing the University degree that I took was because 95% of the total assessment was coursework/dissertation based, with only a measly 5% on two exams... both of which I did poorly in.  I got a third and a 2:2, but ended up with a 2:1 for my degree overall, which gives you an idea of how much better I am at coursework.  Had I had to take just exams at school, I probably wouldn't have got into Uni in the first place; had I had just exams at Uni, I certainly wouldn't have got a 2:1 and consequently, I wouldn't have the good job that I have today.  Fact.

Why is this though?  Basically because I strongly feel that exams are a greater test of your ability to work under pressure and to a time limit, rather than your ability to show your knowledge and clarity about a specific subject.  I'm not saying that exams are useless, because this ability to work under pressure can be a good thing, but if I had my way, I'd ensure that no module, whether it be at GCSE, A2 or degree level, would have no more than around 30% of the total mark weighted by exams.

And that's without factoring in anxiety.

At school and particularly for the Uni exams, I put severe pressure on myself during the build up to an exam; my anxiety symptoms became bad, increasing the likelihood of a panic attack, and my mind became a scrambled racing wreck.  My internal OCD that I mentioned on an earlier blog also meant that I was being forced to focus on other things aside from revision, the opposite of what I wanted. 

So not only did I enter an exam hall a gibbering wreck, but I was less able to capture all of my thoughts that I may need for an exam because my mind was racing at a million mph.  Moreover, because you had to be silent in an exam hall, there was extra pressure on me to make sure I had any potential panic attack quietly, without anyone else noticing... which of course is not easy. 

I managed to never have a major panic attack during an exam, but I remember having several at night-time during an exam period.  This, of course, affected me physically, it affected my ability to revise (again), and gave me less sleep than was required.  At one of the Uni exams, I remember that my OCD was playing me up so much that I couldn't concentrate on anything I was supposed to be writing (this is the one I got a third in); it wasn't long after this exam, I remember, that I went for counselling at the Uni itself.

This is bearing in mind that most modules, even in school, had at least a small element of coursework in addition to the exams, so I can only imagine that this anxiety that was already verging on severe, get worse if there was even more pressure to do well. 

I can appreciate the pitfalls of coursework; I know that plagiarism is an issue and that they are generally seen as being 'simpler' than exams.  But if you are a genuine person as most are, then it is a much less anxiety-producing way of assessing someone's knowledge of a certain subject.  It also does demonstrate a person's knowledge more than exams anyway, in my opinion.  Perhaps there should be some innovative ideas about how to police coursework better, I'm sure it could be done.

I appreciate that the Government and the exam boards can't let a small minority with anxiety dictate their policies, and moreover I appreciate you can't produce an 'anxiety-sufferers' version of an exam (although I'd be intrigued to know what this would entail!), but I strongly believe that having your education decided purely by one exam will make people with anxiety worse off, and also give more people anxiety who perhaps didn't have anxiety before. 

It doesn't make sense, especially when I believe that exams are a poor way of showcasing an individual's knowledge of a subject anyway.  I'm just glad I left school when I did...

Best wishes

Al