GCSEs: Grades ‘virtually unaffected’ by exam stress

Research shows no clear link between pupils’ anxiety over assessments and grade outcomes
15th June 2022, 12:01am

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GCSEs: Grades ‘virtually unaffected’ by exam stress

https://www.tes.com/magazine/news/secondary/gcses-grades-virtually-unaffected-exam-stress
Exam hall with students at desks all figure blurred apart from one

GCSE grades are “virtually unaffected” by students’ exam anxiety, new research has found.

A report published today has found no clear link between pupils’ anxiety over assessments and grade outcomes, with research revealing just a fifth of a GCSE grade between the most anxious and least anxious pupil groups.

The study, which is set to be published today in the peer-reviewed journal Oxford Review of Education, also found very little difference in GCSE outcomes between young people with “typical” levels of test anxiety and those who are at the top-end of the test anxiety scale.

The results found the effects of anxiety to produce the equivalent of getting a grade 4 for those at the top-end of the test anxiety scale versus a grade of 4.2 for “typical” anxiety levels. 

When looking at total GCSE point scores, the research found there to be almost no difference.

Pupils are sitting exams for the first time in two years this summer after cancellations in 2020 and 2021 due to the pandemic, which led to grades being awarded based on teacher assessments.

Study author Professor John Jerrim (IOE, University College London‘s Faculty of Education and Society) said that the new research was the first to show that exam grades are “virtually unaffected by exam worries”.

He said that, while stress and anxiety around GCSEs was ”clearly an important challenge facing some young people”, overall, the problem did not seem to have a “large impact upon the grades that they leave school with”.

Professor Jerrim said this disparity could be due to the “motivating impact of such anxiety” - like spending more time on preparation - “being enough to offset the potential negative effects, including test-anxious young people not being able to fully focus when they are revising”.

Alternatively, he said it could also indicate that mitigations are already in place to help manage these problems.

Earlier this year, a survey found that almost four in five headteachers were getting more requests this year from students wanting to sit exams in separate rooms, mainly due to stress and anxiety. 

The research used data from the Programme for International Student Assessment (Pisa) 2015 - an international study of 15-year-olds’ achievement in reading, mathematics and science - and used a sample of 5,194 Year 11 pupils in England.

As part of the research, the pupils were asked a series of questions to gauge their anxiety around testing and assessment and had to state the extent to which they agreed or disagreed with five statements using a four-point scale.

The questions used were to gauge the fear of failure aspect of their anxiety rather than their emotional effects. 

Pupils were then divided into 10 equally-sized groups according to their levels of anxiety.

Their GCSE grades from examinations taken in May and June 2016 were then compared across these 10 groups for children with the same background characteristics, similar levels of academic abilities and those who attend the same school.

The research also found no link between the impact of test anxiety and the socioeconomic group the pupil belonged to. 

The study concluded that a “greater focus” was needed on this area, as well as exploration of the short and long-term effects that test anxiety has on young people’s lives.

This year, exams will be marked in the same way as in normal years, but Ofqual has said exam boards are taking the impact of Covid into account when looking at grade boundaries.

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