Shelley-Anne Salisbury on the pressure of exam results

For weeks, teenagers - and their parents - have been trapped in a pressure cooker of expectation. Now the steam’s been released, well, mostly.

Here in our NW London bubble, the stakes feel stratospheric.

This is the land of laminated revision timetables on fridge doors, pre-exam 'superfoods' delivered to bedrooms à la room service and the unspoken assumption that anything less than a gleaming line-up of top grades is, frankly, a disappointment.

I should know, I was one of those parents, waiting anxiously for our youngest’s results. You’d think, third time round, I’d be immune. I wasn’t. There’s no veteran calm, just the same old knot in the stomach and silent mental bargaining.

Months of angst lead to a swathe of barely two-hour exams in a sports hall smelling faintly of plimsolls. That’s it.

Two hours to prove a mastery of Shakespeare, algebra or the finer points of photosynthesis. Two hours that can undo two years of solid work because of brain freeze on Question 3.

Shelley-Anne Salisbury asks whether exams are the right way to decide the future of children (Image: 1000words.co.za) Exams aren’t for everyone. Some thrive under timed pressure; others crumble, despite having the brains, creativity and skill to excel in the real world. And yet we persist in treating that tiny window of performance as the ultimate arbiter of ability and potential.

Is this really how we should decide our children’s futures?

The waiting for results is its own special form of torture.

Teenagers spend August trapped in a peculiar limbo - no more revision, yet unable to truly relax. Parents wonder whether to start scouting Plan B schools. WhatsApp groups ping with wild speculation on grade boundaries.

Then results day dawns. Some teenagers emerge euphoric, and others shell-shocked. Social media is populated with envelope-opening shots - grades cropped out, naturally -captioned with “so proud whatever the results” (really?).

For every ecstatic collection of 8s and 9s, there are those who worked just as hard but didn’t get the grades. The system rarely celebrates them or acknowledges that they have been through the same ordeal.

So yes - applaud the top-grade achievers, but let’s stop treating grades as the only measure of success.

In the long run, our children will require other life skills. Resilience, kindness and adaptability will outlast any number on a piece of paper.

Now that the dust has settled, I’m taking a breather. I’ve got two years before my daughter’s A-level results, where the stakes are so much higher, and I fully intend to savour every second.

• Shelley-Anne Salisbury is a mediator, writer and the editor of Suburb News, themediationpod.net.