All this and exam stress, too

After 12 years without any contact, there could hardly have been a worse week than this for Amy Cumming's dad to put in his reappearance. Amy, who's 17, is currently in the middle of her A-levels – and as every parent with an exam-year student knows, that means she's got more than enough on her plate. Alas for Amy, who lives in Orpington in Kent, long-lost dad Sandy just happens to be one of the highest-profile people in Britain right now. He's one of the contestants in the new series of Big Brother, although Amy apparently watched several episodes of the programme before she realised who the token oldie (he described himself as "43 going on 16") was.

Then Sandy, a personal shopper who was married to Amy's mother, Yasmin, from 1982 to 1986, let slip on the show that he had a daughter – and suddenly the chances of Amy finding a quiet few hours to get her head in a book, not to mention concentrate on her exam papers, are looking remote. The tabloids are banging on the door, Amy's story is in the papers, her friends are phoning up asking what's happening – and her mum is desperately worried that her A-levels, and her future with it, are going down the pan.

Having a major trauma in the middle of exam time is the nightmare that every family dreads. Five years ago, Sarah Wilson was diagnosed with breast cancer a week before her son's A-levels started. "In a way it gave me another focus at a very difficult time," she says, "but I was desperately worried that it would affect his results and beyond that, his future. It was very hard because I was having to make decisions about treatment and so on, and I felt the rest of the family were concentrating on me and he was left fending for himself.

"In the event, though, he did well – one of his grades was better than predicted. I wonder whether he was, in a sense, burying himself in his work because what was going on with me was so awful."

Diagnoses of serious illness, and bereavement, are impossible to plan for during the crucial month or so of intensive work around exams – but other stresses are easier to predict, and parents work hard to rule them out. Emma Barlow says that she's doing all she can right now to make her house tranquil and calm for her son's GCSEs. "I've tried to avoid big social events – we certainly aren't having lots of people round, and I've asked my daughter – who isn't doing exams – not to have friends over late into the evening," she says.

"My quest for a quiet life almost came unstuck when my brother, who doesn't have children and lives in the United States, phoned a couple of weeks ago to say he had a job in London and wanted to come and stay for a fortnight. I felt awful about it, but I'm afraid I said no. We don't have a big house, and I know his visit would have been hugely exciting for the children and it would have made the place seem a bit out of my control. I could have risked it and told him that we'd have to be careful because Rob is working so hard, but I'm afraid I took the easier route. He's staying in a hotel."

Psychologist Ruth Coppard of the Barnsley Community and Priority Services NHS Trust says that what it boils down to is personal resilience to outside stresses and strains: "My daughter has just taken her finals and one of the girls in her house absolutely freaked out – which must have affected everyone else, too. If you're just about coping with the stress of the exams and then something big happens in your life, it could be enough to tip you over.

"Of course, a lot of people find pressure exhilarating and do well on it, but, in general, exam fears seem greater than ever. Over the last few weeks I've seen children who are threatening to kill themselves over their SATs [Scholastic Assessment Test]. I've even had a seven-year-old who says he's not going to be a success in life and get a good job if he doesn't do well in his tests.

"For children who are feeling the pressure that keenly, it won't take a lot of extra pressure to make a big difference. And, of course, if something happens to someone in your family everyone else in the family will be affected by it too – so the whole environment is less conducive to calm and studying. On the positive side, I'd say that if something unexpected does happen, though, you should talk about it – but hold off working through the whole impact until the exams are over."

According to Stevie Pattison-Dick of the examination board Edexcel, schools are able to let exam boards know if a pupil has suffered a major trauma during the crucial period. "If there's a bereavement, say, or any other traumatic life event, what the school should do is let the exam board know. We'd then look at the predicted grades the school gave us, and if the student seems to have performed badly the case could go before a panel and the grades may be upped. The student would receive his or her results at the same time as other classmates, and would know their case had been given special consideration."

Michael Duke, principal educational psychologist in Denbighshire, says that part of the problem is that our society is increasingly loading the pressure on to a "window of opportunity" where exams are concerned. "There's a mixed message here, because in other ways there are more chances than ever before for young people to go on studying, to take degrees later in life and so on, so the examination period should in a way matter less. You can always retake. Part of why students feel under so much pressure is that they're surrounded by this high-level anxiety and really do feel that if they slip up now, there's no way of putting things back on track. It's worth remembering that not every pupil who sits an exam this week or next will have come from a family where everyone got up in a calm and collected way and sat neatly chatting around a breakfast table. For a lot of young people, traumatic and difficult events are part of everyday life – and they're having to cope with GCSEs and A-levels, too."