Children struggle with exam pressure

The counseling service has revealed that 1 in 10 pupils will deliberately scar or hit themselves in the run up to their summer exams.

In a study, 14 per cent of young people admitted to turning to alcohol to help them cope with exam pressure and 4 per cent confessed to abusing drugs as a way of dealing with their anxiety.

Marilyn Devonish, a learning coach, has said that children shouldn’t have to feel like this in the run up to their exams.

She said, ‘This should be a time where students are excited about their prospects for the future and focusing on how to shine, not turning to drink, drugs and self-harming as a means of making it through.’

With a little creativity and simple changes in how students approach their revision, studying for exams can become a much easier task, she believes.

Devonish has these five simple tips to stop a student’s workload getting on top of them:

1. Breathe
Well yes, of course you everyone is already breathing, otherwise you wouldn’t be reading this! However, most people when stressed or under pressure find themselves shallow breathing without even realising it. This deprives your brain of oxygen and automatically makes a study session more difficult.

2. Change your focus
Marilyn says, when I first observe my clients in ‘study mode’ they often sit staring intently at the books and piles of course material, brow furrowed, and face slightly contorted, almost trying to physically show how hard they are studying and concentrating.

3. Change your posture
Going hand in hand with sitting and staring intently at the books, is sitting almost hunched over, as though trying to get even closer to the study material. The chances are, if your posture is stressed and out of alignment, your mind will be experiencing the same too.

4. Set your purpose
I know it might sound unbelievable but many students read with no sense of purpose or focus. They spend hours trying to plough through piles of material but if I were stop them and ask “What specifically are you looking for?” The majority would give me a blank stare.

5. Be realistic
One of the fastest ways to get into overwhelm is to take on too much at the outset or have unrealistic expectations about what can be achieved in each study session. When I ask students what they want to achieve from a particular book or subject they often respond along the lines of “I want to know everything about subject X.” It is unlikely that you want or even need to know everything about a subject. What you really need is to know about the subject in a way that will allow you to pass your exams.

By Lauren King