Last year, in randomly selected school halls across the country, Britain pitted its 15-year-olds in an academic competition of wits against children from 79 other countries. The Pisa (Programme for International Student Assessment) tests have taken place across the globe every three years since 2000, and a country’s score is often used to boast about its smartness (or otherwise). The results this year showed the United Kingdom has finally made it into the top five. But our standout statistic isn’t for academic prowess; it’s for our children’s disproportionately high fear of failure.
According to the results, British girls are the fifth most afraid of failure in the world, pipped only by Taipei, Macau, Singapore, and Brunei. Our fear gender gap is also one of the largest, with girls substantially more anxious than boys.
There are a variety of likely reasons for this. Passing exams brings tangible rewards in Britain today. Degree holders earn higher average wages than those without a degree, and the difference is particularly marked for women, whose alternative to a graduate career tends to be a lower-paid vocational role, such as a care worker. Gender equality may owe less to shifts in social conscience, and more to women worrying themselves into hard work and promotion. This is good, some might say. Indeed, if girls are doing so much better at school, isn’t it boys we should be worrying about?
Mental health figures are always tricky to navigate, with lots of caveats, but a consistent finding across several recent reports is that Britain’s teenage girls are self-harming and struggling with emotional disorders – the most recent NHS data puts the figure at one in five (22.4%) by the age of 19, more than three times the rate for boys. This sounds ludicrously high – is every fifth teenager really struggling emotionally? But if we’re fifth in the world for students’ fear, I worry they are right. And while we may look at the data and say it is not hurting their grades, if it’s causing scars on their arms and hearts, we ought carefully to consider what might be causing the problem.
Fifteen-year-olds in the UK are approaching high-stakes exams that affect their next step in education. Analysis of the 2015 Pisa results found that children in England were not tested more than in other countries –but since then, England has largely scrapped coursework for GCSEs, and exam resits, while increasing the difficulty and length of tests. Perhaps this is why life satisfaction for all children in the UK – boys and girls – has dropped faster since 2015 than in any other country.
Assessment does not have to work like this. Wales has kept some modular exams and continues to rethink how things could be different under its new curriculum. For instance, must exams be timed? Children in most countries don’t sit final exams until 18, when they are older and more confident. This ensures they continue learning maths and English throughout school. Such changes could make a difference and should be debated.
But we must bear one thing in mind. When Ofqual, the exams regulator, interviewed teachers about the changes, many said they were concerned the new system caused greater anxiety for pupils. The researchers concluded that changing everything around was likely to stress people more than if they had been left alone.
As we roll into a new government, we owe it to our young people to look carefully at what is influencing these scores and what we can do to help. However, we must go gently, for it may be that our overzealous enthusiasm for change prompted the problem in the first place. Children are not guinea pigs to be trained up for Pisa. Let’s all remember that.
