I have always been a keen learner.
How keen? I was that five-year-old who read stories to dolls and embraced any excuse for a star chart.
During the weeks leading up to my Year 7 admission, I proudly paraded around the kitchen donning my new, rigid blazer, admiring my “she’ll grow into them” sleeves, awkwardly fitting shoulder pads and enough pockets to put Mary Poppins out of a job.
Thank my mother: she’s a primary school teacher. Not only was this absurd behaviour accepted but encouraged.
The end of an era
Fast forward to 2020 and just as my first day wearing my blazer was a huge moment, so the last proved monumental too with Thursday 19 March our final day at school due to the coronavirus pandemic.
One immediate result of this was that the exams we had hugely invested in and spent years building our school learning towards were cancelled, with grades to be determined in an entirely new way: centre assessment grades.
For the first time, a nation of students would not sit the GCSE examinations, but rather schools would collect student data to determine our grades.
Receiving this information led to some mixed responses at my school: anger, tears, joy, anxiety, confusion, calm…and that was just me in the first hour.
Do we need exams?
The cancellation of GCSEs left students and staff alike questioning the need for the Year 11 exams. GCSEs, for many 16-year-olds, are the cause of a decline in mental health.
If fair results could be determined without (frankly inhumane) pressure on teenagers, surely a reformed assessment should take place?
Is the sanity of our nation’s 16-year-olds worth sacrificing for the sake of a tedious, antiquated exam system?
Furthermore, collecting data from a range of sources to assess a child requires that student to have worked hard and concentrated for the duration of the course, rather than being assessed solely on their ability to cram from the Easter half term onwards.
When done successfully, it is arguably a fairer assessment of knowledge.
Removing the pressure of grades based on hours of examinations allows room for creativity to explore and develop a passion for subjects.
It also requires a student to learn the skill of sustained hard work, balanced with a healthy lifestyle, which is essential to life beyond GCSEs. Rather than being emotionally and physically exhausting, studies should inspire our youth.
Learning to love learning again
A reformed system that removes the shackles of exam pressure will only improve the relationship between student and education.
Even I, a keen learner, had a lump in my throat at the thought of 34 gruelling exams.
It is hard to love learning when that lump is always there: at school, home and out with friends. Restricted breathing.
Now that the lump has faded away with the cancellation of exams, I can breathe easy.
Once again, I am that young girl. Now I have outgrown my blazer; instead, I window-shop breezy, flowing skirts for sixth form. I read The Great Gatsby to my dog - who feigned interest better than any doll ever did.
Once again, I am absurdly excited by education.
Chloe Miller is a Year 11 student in London. She blogs at https://cthinks.home.blog/
