GCSE students’ exam nerves were at a high this year, say headteachers

Pupils who sat GCSEs this year were so nervous about their exams that they suffered from anxiety, panic attacks and insomnia, according to headteachers.

The heads also said they had never seen a year group face so much uncertainty over grades and progression to sixth-form.

GCSE grades due out on Thursday are expected to be at a rough midpoint between those of 2019 and 2021 to represent a return to normality while reflecting the challenges of the pandemic.

Heads who spoke to the Guardian worried that students from disadvantaged backgrounds who missed out on more learning would be disproportionately affected by grade deflation.

“It’s the most disadvantaged students, those on pupil premium and free school meals, whose education has been most disrupted on top of the disadvantage they’ve already got,” said Raza Ali, the headteacher of Chalk Hills academy in Luton.

“Every year you get nerves – it wouldn’t feel like results day without them, but this year there are a lot more nerves, a lot more anxiety, a lot more unknowns – nobody knows really what’s going to happen. What doesn’t help is that teachers are a bit bewildered as well,” he said.

Ali said he did not believe that the additional difficulties of the past year had been factored in, including Covid absences, fuel shortages and a shortage of funding for catch-up learning. In his WhatsApp group of 100 heads who work with Teach First, a charity that tackles educational disadvantage, “everyone is genuinely worried”, he said.

He added that he did not think the government understood the scale of the mental health challenge facing some schools. “I’ve never seen it at this level, it’s a huge problem, and it’s growing. This is going to trickle through society for a number of years to come.”

Lots of his GCSE students had panic attacks on exam day, including four who vomited from stress. Others lost their appetite or developed insomnia in the runup to exams, and in some cases “that anxiety and stress is tipping over into borderline suicidal thoughts”, he said.

Andy Webster, the headteacher of Park View school in Tottenham, north London, said the current GCSE cohort had been “more affected than any other so far” by Covid and inconsistent schooling, especially those who lacked devices and study space at home, or whose families could not help with online learning or afford tutors.

“I don’t think the government has made the right decision in pushing through GCSEs this year,” he said, adding that he thought the focus for this age group should be on catching up rather than “fixating on numbers and grades”.

He worried about how lower grades might affect his students’ futures, since they are especially at risk of becoming Neets – not in education, employment or training – if they are rejected for post-16 courses. “This set of results won’t tell colleges very much because there are two years’ worth of missed education.”

Angela Wallace, the headteacher of Woodside school in Haringey, north London, said this was especially a problem for schools such as hers. “The whole process is unfair because they didn’t know how to do exams and they feel they’ve been robbed of a year of school. We don’t have a sixth-form so an awful lot rests on it. In this area, lots of sixth-forms have entry requirements, so it will influence their choices.”

Although her school set two mock exams, she didn’t feel that pupils had the opportunity to develop revision skills and maturity, and many struggled to maintain momentum over the lengthened exam timetable. “The thing they tended to say was ‘there’s just so much to know’,” she said.

James Eldon, the principal of the Manchester Academy, noted that “there’s a nervousness in Manchester” over results because of how badly the city had been hit by the pandemic. He said that in a multicultural school such as his, many pupils whose families do not speak English at home struggled with literacy after lockdowns.

But he said many of his students saw exams as a promising sign that normality had returned, and he praised their “pragmatism and fortitude”. “We had our first year 11 prom for a few years this year and I sat and watched and felt incredibly proud.”