EXAMINATIONS


the cultivation of an alert, focused frame of mind, ready to concentrate and to operate at maximum efficiency. Cultivating this frame of mind is partly a matter of


getting the brain itself into the best state for an exam. A badly nourished brain performs under par. Equally, tired brains function markedly worse than fresh ones. Ensuring that a brain is fresh for an exam involves a great deal more than an early night on the eve of the exam: sleep deprivation builds up over the weeks and days before the exam and cannot be recovered in a night – and can have an effect equivalent to knocking off 10 or more IQ points. Preparations for a focused mind on exam day should involve good diet and a healthy sleep pattern in the weeks beforehand – just as an athlete would prepare the body for a challenge. But cultivating an optimally alert frame of mind for


an exam is also a matter of learning strategies to still the mind and bring it into focus. Here, the young can benefit from learning the techniques of “mindfulness”: of letting go of everything that is not relevant just now, and focusing attention solely on the present moment. This is surprisingly hard to do! Our minds are so busy with thoughts, often thoughts that distract and undermine (“oh no! I’ve made a mistake, it’s all going wrong! This is a disaster, I’m going to fail!” and so on). The difference between a champion – at Wimbledon,


say – and an equally talented player who somehow never wins the trophy is an ability to put all such thoughts aside, to concentrate only on what he or she is doing right now and not on what happened a minute ago or might happen a minute from now. And that is the kind of focus needed for doing one’s best in an exam. Mindfulness cannot simply be “switched on”


without preparation: it is a skill that, like any other skill, needs to be learned and practised if it is to work for us in an exam. We have to learn to let go of distracting or undermining thoughts, preconceptions, irrelevancies – to let them pass and slip out of mind without engaging our attention. We have to learn to focus on and engage with the situation in hand as it is, specifically and directly. Each time we try to be mindfully present as we do some task (or go for a walk, or engage with friends, or whatever), we build up the ability to control our attention in this way. Progressively, we can challenge ourselves to be


“mindful” in harder and harder situations. Knowing that one has learned to control attention in this way is


perhaps the single best antidote to anxiety about exams. SecEd


• Dr Stephanie Thornton, a chartered psychologist, is a former lecturer in psychology and child development.


Independent thinking The case for blind testing xam stress


Exams and the consequences of our performance in them genuinely are threatening, even for (and often more for) the most able. The young should be encouraged to acknowledge their fear rather than denying it, to let themselves feel the fear rather than trying to repress it or distract themselves from it. What they should be encouraged to face in this way


is fear, not panic: the ideal is to face up to fear in a manageable way, even if that means bit by bit, building up from lesser to greater fears step-by-step rather than allowing themselves to be overwhelmed and lose control. Exposure to too much anxiety to handle in one step might make the situation worse. The interesting thing about facing up to fear in this


way is that, with each encounter, anxiety and all its bodily and psychological effects reduce. In effect we become “desensitised” to the fear, more able to take the challenge in our stride. The optimal plan is to face the fear and continue to


do so until anxiety has at least halved, before moving on – which generally takes 20 minutes to an hour, but may be longer. So, for example, you might encourage the anxious to imagine walking into the exam, sitting down, turning the paper over and finding their worst fear has been realised (or the worst fear they can manage today without panic – building up over time to worse scenarios as their overall anxiety reduces). Feel the fear and let it fade. With each repetition of


this exercise, the anxiety experienced should reduce until all that is left is the slight stress that provides that useful alertness optimal for doing one’s best in an exam. The more vividly the exam is imagined in advance (the details of the room, the walk to the desk, the smells and sounds of the exam hall, the touch of the pen – and so on) the more effective this exercise can be in reducing stress on the day. Exam stress is far more complex than simply


anxiety about taking the exam itself, of course. A major component is anxiety about the results of the exam,


SecEd • May 5 2011


and what consequences those results may have. Here, another kind of exercise may be useful. Faced with a fear of this kind, we human beings tend


to think in black and white “absolutist” ways. We must do well or achieve a certain grade or disaster will strike. And having decided this, we “awfulise”: we imagine that the disaster will be utterly awful, irredeemable, catastrophic. In reality, things hardly ever work out that way.


Very little is black and white in this life. And far fewer “disasters” are irretrievable than we suppose. A student stressed out on the “what if” of exam failure might benefit from reflecting on those truths – and perhaps, from reflecting on history. Albert Einstein was no star in exams. In fact, he was so bad that he was thought to be learning disabled and expelled from school. Other notable exam flunks include Charles Darwin, Sir Isaac Newton, Thomas Edison, Sir Winston Churchill – the super-stressed may benefit from an internet search to identify the very many famously successful people who did not sail triumphantly through exams. The fact to hang on to is that while life may be a lot simpler if you pass an exam, failing an exam is definitely not the life-disaster many imagine. Furthermore, there is more to life than passing


exams, exam success does not make an individual a more valuable person, nor does exam failure make him or her a less valuable one. Our school system places so much emphasis on exam results, league tables and so on that this point may be less apparent to our young than we suppose. The “hidden agenda” of our current education system is so strongly: “Do well or you’ve failed/are a failure.” It’s worth countering this by underlining human value in the run-up to exams. Both rehearsing the exam experience to desensitise


students to fear, and putting the possible consequences of exams in perspective are valuable preparations for an exam, but there is another kind of preparation that can produce enormous benefits on the day, too. This is


SOCIAl MOBIlITy is the phrase which seems to be on everyone’s lips these days – but what does it really mean? Is social status like an old-fashioned O level where grades were awarded according to fixed percentages, using a statistical curve, with only a small percentage gaining the highest and lowest grades, or is it like the modern examinations which are criterion-referenced, so that theoretically everyone can gain an A grade if they fulfil the criteria? If some people rise to a higher class,


do others automatically have to lose status? If some people become richer do others have to become poorer? Could we end up with almost no-one in the lowest socio-economic classes because everyone has degrees, or if you have a degree but work in a manual low-status occupation would you be classified as belonging to the lower classes? Apparently universities are to be


encouraged to discriminate positively in favour of pupils who attend less successful schools, or live in areas where few proceed to higher education, or who come from a particular minority ethnic group. The news blogs have been filled with comments suggesting that if meritocracy is thus to be outlawed we should allow less successful athletes to participate in the Olympics and choose the weakest medical graduates to become specialist surgeons. A more powerful argument has been put forward by those involved in working with able pupils in schools in disadvantaged areas. The Villiers Park charity, for example,


supports such able pupils and offers enrichment courses and as a result these pupils have successfully gained offers from Oxbridge and other top universities, but they have been asked to get three A grades at A level and are on course to do so. In Europe there are no entry requirements for


most universities, but about a third of students are de-selected at the end of the first year course. Should we make all English universities the same and select undergraduates by lottery?


I am the head of an oversubscribed, academically


selective school. We face many challenges to our 11-plus entry decisions and I know of heads in other schools who have been taken to court on grounds of alleged racial discrimination in their admissions process. Consequently, we use candidate numbers not names on scripts and are scrupulous in our marking. Nonetheless, as our tests are based on the standard key stage 2 English and maths curriculum, children from local state primary schools acquit themselves well and win scholarships, outperforming other candidates from prep schools. Surely the fairest way to


select students for university courses would be to anonymise the applications and set tests which require intelligence rather than relying on the ability to jump through hoops. The challenge is


to be able to identify potential and intellectual ability. On the other hand, raw talent is not


enough to enable a student to succeed in many degree courses if they have no relevant prior knowledge or skills on which to build. Certainly, academics at top universities will not want to spend their time offering “catch-up” or remedial classes to students who have come without the necessary prior skills. The solution is almost universally


acknowledged to be to improve all schools. However, in the interim, I should like to know whether students from my school will be discriminated against. Is it remotely just that a student coming from an underprivileged background


on a full bursary at an independent school should lose their place to some well-heeled politician’s offspring who attends a comprehensive but who has extensive private tutoring? Indeed, why should any child be judged by their parents’ choices and circumstances? Blind testing has much to recommend it.


• Marion Gibbs is headmistress of the independent James Allen’s Girls’ School in London.


Assembly corner


“A human being is not attaining his full heights


until he is educated.” Horace Mann (1796-1859), American education reformer


“If you believe everything


you read, better not read.” Japanese proverb


“Wear your learning, like your watch, in a private pocket: and do not pull it out and strike it, merely to show


that you have one.” Fourth Earl of Chesterfield Philip Stanhope (1694-1773), British statesman


“Wise people learn when they can; fools learn when


they must.” Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington (1769-1852)


“If you can’t make a mistake,


you can’t make anything.” Marva Collins (1936-), American educator famed for her work with disadvantaged children


“It’s not that I’m so smart, it’s just that I stay with


problems longer.” Albert Einstein (1879-1955), Swiss German physicist


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