Missing the Mark: My speech to Parliament on exams and mental health

Topics mentioned: Missing The Mark campaign, exam stress

About: On 17 June, our Activist Dinah gave this powerful speech to MPs at our event in Parliament, calling for urgent reform to the exam system and sharing the reality of how it affects young people’s mental health.

One by one, hundreds of bodies entering a grey, cold room. Every footstep echoes, every cough vibrates, every deep breath resonates. An array of bodies, individually identified by a 4-digit number. You take your allocated seat; you are now shackled to flimsy desks due to serve a set sentence. Foreign faces with blank stares take slow and lingering paces, impending your doom. The clock is speeding away, counting down the mere minutes until your very clear fate. You know what ever grade you manage to get, will be carved into your future.

Will that grade reward the months of all-nighters, months of anxiety, months of isolation, months of crying, months of hard work…?

Think about that number…

The NHS defines anxiety as a ‘natural response to pressure, feeling afraid or threatened.’ Currently, there are obscene numbers of young people feeling afraid and threatened by pieces of paper.

This year, my passion towards assessment reform has been fuelled by invigilating this summer’s A-level and GCSE series and a placement with a year 6 class. The children in each room I have witnessed, are individuals with lives as unique, vivid, and complex as the next.

However, the exam system doesn’t consider the children as individuals and their experiences in life. I would have hated being referred to as a child at the age of 16, but I was a child, a child completing exams with the power to dictate the rest of my life.

I’ve watched innocent, lively 11-year-olds bombarded with last-minute revision and mock exams. Research shows that 1 in 10 year 6 children lose sleep over their SATs exams. These children, whom I’d come to know as individuals with full lives, dreams, ambitions, talents, and personalities, I now partook in reducing them to a colour-coded spreadsheet. These glowing children on Monday, now dull and lifeless by Friday.

The Missing the Mark campaign represents the hope that we as YoungMinds Activists, have in the improvement of the quality of young lives, once assessment is reformed. As a collective, we decided that enough is enough, and we wanted to use our voices to fight against this cruel, unfair means of assessing children. Together, we selected a name that would encapsulate the implications of these exams on children. We have also had many workshops and meetings to identify our campaign goals and fully understand the issue at hand.

Days like today are promising, as we as young people, see the amount of support we have from those who can make a change. We hope that through engagement with today’s event, you feel compelled to enact change on behalf of young people across the country.