11 Plus Exams Forum

I don't want to sound like a killjoy, but should we really be encouraging young people to eat cake, fudge, chocolate and other 'delicious food' as an effective way of coping with stress and anxiety?

Maybe going outside for a run or something might be a better way to relieve exam related stress?

One thing that I think might help reduce stress would be for schools to deal with predicted grades differently.
If I ran a school (which given my lack of teaching knowledge, would probably not be a very successful school ) I would not allow any predictions above a 7. I would make the teachers write 7+ and leave it at that.
I'm not sure I totally understand the purpose of predicted grades.
If students better their predictions then that's always going to be great. But if they do worse than predictions which are unrealistically (and possibly unintentionally) aspirational then they're going to be disappointed.
Most students are not going to get all 8s and 9s but some students on a good day would be capable of an 8 in any of their subjects. But are they going to have 20 good days?!
My dd is predicted good grades and I wish they wouldn't. As a parent I feel I have to manage her expectations because I do not want her initial response on seeing her results to be disappointment. At the same time I don't want to come across as doubting her abilities. Fine line
But at least that's my response.
She knows students where their parents are assuming they will get all grade 9s and whose parents will be unhappy if they don't (I assume they don't even understand how the grade 9 actually works). That's very stressful for those children.

loobylou wrote:One thing that I think might help reduce stress would be for schools to deal with predicted grades differently.
If I ran a school (which given my lack of teaching knowledge, would probably not be a very successful school ) I would not allow any predictions above a 7. I would make the teachers write 7+ and leave it at that.
I'm not sure I totally understand the purpose of predicted grades.
If students better their predictions then that's always going to be great. But if they do worse than predictions which are unrealistically (and possibly unintentionally) aspirational then they're going to be disappointed.
Most students are not going to get all 8s and 9s but some students on a good day would be capable of an 8 in any of their subjects. But are they going to have 20 good days?!
My dd is predicted good grades and I wish they wouldn't. As a parent I feel I have to manage her expectations because I do not want her initial response on seeing her results to be disappointment. At the same time I don't want to come across as doubting her abilities. Fine line
But at least that's my response.
She knows students where their parents are assuming they will get all grade 9s and whose parents will be unhappy if they don't (I assume they don't even understand how the grade 9 actually works). That's very stressful for those children.

Absolutely Loobyloo. Same problem with my daughter because her grade predictions are so good she has huge expectations of herself which because of her dyslexia don't always translate into exams. Her likely to achieve levels are even higher than her predictions and that is scary. One of her fiends has been predicted almost all 9's and I feel so very sorry for that particular girl because her parents are now expecting her to get almost all 9's (very unlikely).
The whole process of exams now is so stressful. When I did my O'Levels (back in the day) I didn't even know that there was any such thing as an exam spec and I certainly didn't feel the need to know it inside out in order to make sure that I knew every detail. There was no pressure. You didn't need 3 As at A level to get into any Uni course even medicine. Talk to most people of my generation and sitting their GCSe's was more akin to sitting end of years now. Much more laid back. It wasn't considered a sin not to go to Uni and if you weren't particularly educationally minded you left school at 16 and got a job.
Our YP now are being forced into staying in education when it isn't suitable for many. Don't even get me started on a apprenticeships. Learning used to be considered as something that you can go back to. Now YP think it is their only chance. Universities don't seem to give the same concessions to mature students as they used to.
We are being put on a hamster wheel at the age of 4 in this country and told that we have to stay on it until retirement.

Eccentric wrote:When I did my O'Levels (back in the day) I didn't even know that there was any such thing as an exam spec and I certainly didn't feel the need to know it inside out in order to make sure that I knew every detail. There was no pressure.

+1

Though I think one of my teachers didn't know there was an exam spec either ... one of the questions in an O'Level exam hadn't even been covered in class!

I did not know about nor did I ever see a single exam spec or past paper for either O levels or A levels.

It makes such as difference now to be able to work with them and make sure you have covered everything that is likely to be asked. DG

Surferfish wrote:I don't want to sound like a killjoy, but should we really be encouraging young people to eat cake, fudge, chocolate and other 'delicious food' as an effective way of coping with stress and anxiety?

Maybe going outside for a run or something might be a better way to relieve exam related stress?

Isn't the tryptophan awfully good for stress? whereas as the old endorphins are just addictive

hermanmunster wrote:

Surferfish wrote:I don't want to sound like a killjoy, but should we really be encouraging young people to eat cake, fudge, chocolate and other 'delicious food' as an effective way of coping with stress and anxiety?

Maybe going outside for a run or something might be a better way to relieve exam related stress?

Isn't the tryptophan awfully good for stress? whereas as the old endorphins are just addictive

I am not expert just an interested party and I am happy to be proven wrong in my readings however however my understanding is that I don’t think there is a lot of tryptophan in cake Hermanmunster. Anyway they now know that triptophan doesn’t convert directly into seretonin but that 90% of seratonin is produced in the gut by (can’t remember the name) a particular bacteria. This then does cross the blood brain barrier. As in another discussion eating too much cake causes inflammation which makes the body produce Cytokines which also pass through the bbb

Helping others is a good way to reduce your own stress, and get things into perspective.

Some cake is nice too. And exercise, but mainly cake.