So, I wasn’t actually going to talk about this as I didn’t want to sound like a whiny teen, but as my results day gets ever closer and many A-Level students are changing their life plans due to their results, I realised I’m not the only person in this boat.
For most of you it was probably quite a while since you did your GCSEs or A-Levels, but there’s a high possibility you may know someone who did them this year, such as myself. Personally, not to say that other past years didn’t find their exams difficult, but I think that this year was probably the worst performing year in quite some time. By this, I mean within the first month of this last school year, many students in my cohort had already given up. This attitude wasn’t entirely down to laziness either.
From day one, we were told the pressure was high for us to get good grades. From what I gather, most schools got the same assemblies our first days back: our teachers announcing that the previous years results were at an all time high and for us to get anything below would make us all a disappointment. It was actually shocking how much pressure they were putting on a group of 15-year-olds, so the majority of my year left that hall feeling uncomfortable and put off. That was probably the start of our laid back demeaners.
By our Christmas mocks, more of us had given up, as the expectations being made of us as the expectations became increasingly unachievable. I, myself, had already burnt myself out with all my study which left me in exhausted and a living zombie for the next 4 months. I even found myself (like many others) incredibly low and helpless, not seeing myself getting past the next 5 months. It was a difficult period for not just me but my whole family who watched me go through this slump.
Finally, when our exams finally rolled around. There was a high percentage of students bunking out of lessons, that we were still being forced to sit through, in hope of last-minute revision to catch up on work we missed during lockdown. It wasn’t just my school either, as there became an almost secret study group in Dane John Gardens with students from schools all over Canterbury. Exams started to fly by, with each one everyone lost more and more momentum, to the point where at just my school alone there were at least 15 kids sleeping through each of their exams without so much as opening the paper. I, myself, drifted off during Physics (although I had finished the paper) from being so tremendously tired. Yet, still there were authority figures standing outside our exam hall, reminding us of the stakes if we didn’t get good marks.
It’s as if many people don’t realise that we also suffered during lockdown. Now it’s coming to results days and our schools are getting nasty surprises when our grades are at an all time low. We’ve been through years of lost childhoods and mental health issues, just to come back to a world of too-high expectations and lost dreams.
I would not have gotten this far if it hadn’t been for my parents’ support. So, it’s really important that students, while only seen as numbers and statistics by education authorities, feel the support and realistic expectations of those around them.
Very though provoking Rosie