I beg to move,
That this House has considered reforming the educational assessment system.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Lewell. Over the summer, another cohort of young people finished their exams, marking the end of a period that left many feeling overwhelmed, anxious or uncertain about the future. Young people are growing up at the sharp end of so many challenges. We can see that reflected in recent figures from NHS England: one in four young people are struggling with their mental health, and the number of 16 to 24-year-olds with a common mental health condition is up by more than a third in a decade.
We face an unprecedented a youth mental health crisis. I am proud to sit behind a Labour Government that recognise the scale of the challenge. Almost 1 million more pupils will have access to school-based mental health support this year, and 6,700 additional mental health workers have been recruited since last July. But we cannot ignore the impact that the exam system is having on children and young people’s mental health. We must go further.
Paddy, a YoungMinds activist, gave a striking account of his A-level experience. He said that:
“From the start of Year 13,1 found it difficult to think about anything other than exams. At school, I would hardly eat anything, as I was so focussed on studying. The exams massively heightened my OCD. It seemed to know these exams were incredibly important to me, and it went on the attack. The peak was the night before one exam, when I had a complete breakdown and could not stop crying. The pressure was enormous, and I felt like I was drowning in the sea of pressure. Two years after finishing my exams, I still have nightmares about them, imagining I’m back in the exam hall.”
Paddy’s experience is not an isolated example. Research from the YoungMinds Missing the Mark campaign reveals the profound impact that exams are having on children and young people. Over 60% of GCSE and A-level students struggled to cope during exam season, with many experiencing panic attacks, or even suicidal thoughts and self-harm, and taking time off school. At just 11 years old, year 6 pupils said that their SATS made them question their abilities for the first time in their lives, losing confidence and missing out on sleep as a result.
Let me be clear: I am not making an anti-exams argument. Exams help to level the playing field, and there will always be a place for them. But there is a clear imbalance in the system. Young people are simply sitting too many exams in a concentrated timeframe that puts unacceptable pressure on pupils and teachers alike. Reforms to GCSEs over the last decade have led to an eight-hour increase in exam time, with end-of-course exams nearly all taken over a period of six weeks in a single summer term. Sixteen-year-olds in England spend approximately 31.5 hours sitting their GCSE exams. Compare that to Victoria in Australia, where students in low secondary sit around four hours of centralised exams; in Alberta in Canada it is 10 hours, in Poland it is 12, and in the Republic of Ireland it is 16.
I argue that we are now seeing the fallout of those changes: a much less flexible system that is contributing to a deepening mental health crisis. Eight in 10 education leaders surveyed by the Association of School and College Leaders said that reformed GCSEs had created greater levels of stress and anxiety among their students.
The current system is not just damaging to wellbeing; it is failing to effectively assess the skills that young people need today. A focus on memory recall is pushing educators to teach to the test, covering content at pace at the expense of developing a depth of understanding.