Exams are limiting students...

Why is it that students have to take all of their exams in one go? All exams are now being taken in the summer. Is that really fair? How can it thoroughly and correctly assess a student’s ability?

Students are put under continuous pressure from their parents, their teachers and even the government. They are put under colossal strain – the expectations of them are unrealistically high a lot of the time. Putting exams in the summer only, is just causing this pressure to be even more immense.

Students are forced to work from September to May – non-stop in order for them to get decent grades in the summer. They work all year, potentially achieving A grades every single time that they complete an assessment; however, on their summer exam day, they may be ill – or they may have a nose bleed, they may have had an argument with someone – or they exam paper could just be a tricky one. All of these things could cause a student to lose everything that they have worked for, just because they just happened to have had an off day. How can this possibly be fair?

How can it be fair that students have to work day-in-day-out for essentially no reason at all? Why should they have to put themselves through that? The education system really is unfair. The student life is not at all as ‘glamorous’ as it seems. Yes, students do get a lot of school holidays – but, they really do need them!

Every school holiday is simply like getting one step closer to the end of a very difficult, long journey – this journey is school life. Yes, you have fun at school sometimes, and you make friends that may be friends for life. Yet, it really is not what people think it is. Exams really are bad for students and their health; they can cause them to get stress-related illnesses and that can also cause them to underachieve in their exams – therefore, it should be obvious that the current education system isn’t helping students at all. The government would like a new, strong, healthy workforce; but, how are they going to get that when they put us under so much pressure that it makes us ill? It makes absolutely no sense at all!

Making students do all of their exams in the summer is just setting them up to fail... well, maybe that is what the government want. They are powerful and dominant over the subordinate members of society – the vulnerable, belittled members of society; therefore, they express their power in an unfair way – a way that makes students feel like giving up on everything every day. A way that causes students to cry every single day because they are stressed about their essay that is due in the next day. A way that creates a false hope for students, students that are struggling every single day of their lives – and what are they struggling for? Nothing. They are struggling by working their butts off all year; just for the topics that they have learnt to not come up in the exam. They are struggling so that they come out of their exams crying – partly with relief that it is all over; but, mainly because they have messed up their one and only chance, and now they are going to have to go through it all again – and for what? Because universities don’t accept failures... so what is the point? I mean, really?

Summer exams only, they are just a really unfair way of belittling students. They create false hope for students and crush their life-long dreams – they should bring back modular exams; at least give us a chance.

The student life really is unfair at times. When will Michael Gove finally learn this? I’ll tell you when... he’ll learn it when it’s too late... just you watch!