What are you supposed to do when your 16-year-old daughter rings you in hysterics, having had a full-blown, can’t-breathe, heart-pounding panic attack in the middle of the maths GCSE?

She is actually quite good at maths, but the reformed GCSE has crushed any confidence out of her and she now has no belief that she can do maths at all. And things were not much better at my son’s school, where one of his friends burst into tears during the same exam, overwhelmed by the difficulty of the paper.

Now that I have discovered that the Edexcel maths GCSE included an A-level further maths question (the infamous Q22) and 50 per cent of the exam was aimed at levels 7-9 (the old grade A and above), what hope is there for a child who is not operating at that level?

What possible utility is there in a system that destroys any desire to learn, strips any curiosity about the world and simply teaches you to run through the assault course that is now secondary education?

The pressure has been ratcheting up for weeks. Saturday schools, residential weekends: my daughter’s school has been trying everything to help. But everything it does only adds to the fear. 

And now, with two 16-year-olds and an 18-year-old in the house, we are about to reach peak exam.

All I can do is to encourage them to keep going, keep revising and to try to feed them homemade food to fuel them through the agony. I watch my son become more withdrawn and my younger daughter become more despondent as each day passes.

What price success?

I am concerned about all three of my children’s mental health - the tears and outbursts of anxiety and insomnia are only increasing as we struggle through each week. This is not education; this is torture.

I rage at the system, the “reforms” that are putting intolerable pressure on teachers and students and the endless changes that are creating a generation of damaged children.

All three of my children’s schools have been doing their best, but all three of my children are guinea pigs for the reformed GCSEs and A levels, and are suffering because of the uncertainty filtering through about the new exams.

Endless debates about grade boundaries are useless when the only way of calming my daughter down was for her to breathe into a paper bag.

Roll on 27 June, when the last exam is over and we can all breathe again.

The writer wishes to remain anonymous

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