Mind the Gap: Mental Health vs. Exam Pressure

Ah, May. The month when spring flowers bloom, birds sing, and students across the UK sit down to take Standard Assessment Tests (SATs). It also happens to be Mental Health Awareness Week. Which is, frankly, amazing timing!

There’s something darkly poetic about aligning a national conversation on mental wellbeing with one of the most stressful events in a child’s academic year. It’s like handing someone a stress ball as you push them into a high-stakes obstacle course: “Go on now, breathe deeply—while sprinting.”

Every year, schools ramp up mental health support for students during exam season. More mindfulness sessions. More breathing techniques. More therapy dogs, colour-coded revision timetables, and posters reminding pupils that “you are more than your grades” (often plastered next to a wall-sized countdown to exam day).

This is not satire—it’s happening.

And yes, it’s well-meaning. And I really want to acknowledge here the hard work which is going into this. It is certainly not my intention to lessen the love and care which so many school staff put into looking after their students, especially in these times of stress. In fact, the support given by school staff and parents is the only really valuable input here. Indeed, it is a big part of my work, too. But it’s also like setting off a fire alarm, seeing kids panic, and instead of asking why the building is on fire, we double the number of marshals instructing them to “walk calmly.”

Because let’s be honest: exams, in their current form, are the fire. Full stop.

Complementary measures we see in school during these testing times are:

• Practice papers spread over time (not crammed).

• Reduced homework around SATs season.

• Reassuring messages from teachers (“This test doesn’t define you!”).

• Parent workshops to manage expectations and reduce home pressure.

• Breakfast Clubs to assure students are well nourished and arrive in good time before exams

  
  

Great! Except—should 10- and 11-year-olds need all this scaffolding to sit a comprehension test?

We acknowledge that children are stressed and that this culture of testing is doing more damage than good. The irony is almost too much: the awareness is high, the empathy is flowing—and yet the structural engine of stress continues to roll on, unquestioned. Being busy and stressed is a measure of success in our society today and we seem to accept it as an inevitable by-product also for our children.

Imagine if we treated adult jobs this way: “To help you deal with the weekly panic attacks caused by your performance metrics, we’re offering a lunchtime colouring session and a downloadable mindfulness podcast.”

There’s a curious linguistic phenomenon in the way we talk about this: exams “are known to cause stress,” children “often feel pressure,” mental health “can be affected.” Notice the vagueness? The passive voice? It cushions responsibility. It allows us to say, “Isn’t it awful?” without asking “Why are we doing this?”

We treat students like victims of a natural disaster—it seems unfortunate but inevitable. And so, we throw everything we’ve got at managing the seemingly unavoidable situation: resilience training, mental health apps, motivational assemblies. All to help them cope better with a system many adults would crumble under.

But here's the (positive and hopeful) twist: things can change. And they are changing—albeit slowly. Finland, famous for having no standardised testing until the end of secondary school, continues to rank highly in educational outcomes and student wellbeing. In the UK, some schools are piloting alternative assessment models—project-based learning, collaborative portfolios, and teacher-assessed grades. During the pandemic, when traditional exams were cancelled, students didn't fall apart. Teachers were trusted to assess fairly. The sky didn’t fall.

And even here at home, the very fact that we are throwing resources at mental health is a signal: we know something’s wrong. We’re just not calling the problem by its name.

So What Now?

Let’s stop acting like we’re powerless. Exams aren’t the weather. They were created by people—and they can be redesigned by people, too. That doesn’t mean ditching standards or accountability. It means reassessing how we measure learning, growth, creativity, and resilience—without crushing the very children we’re trying to nurture.

Let’s shift from helping children survive exam season to building a system they don’t have to survive at all. A system they can thrive in, where they are supported to grow and excel. Let us change this passive voice and turn it into an empowered one, A voice which not only calls for change but articulates a tangible solution by implementing slow and steady steps towards a future where learning is a positive experience because it is a celebration of how far students have come! I am a mental health firefighter and in a better system I would love to see my role redundant.

Because a child in tears over a comprehension question isn’t a sign that they are unprepared for the world. It’s a sign that we might need to rewrite the test.