Well done GCSE students! Now let’s make schools better

A curious feature of the slow news month of August is the ritual of politicians and employer associations congratulating the nation’s pupils on their GCSE results, whatever they are.

Today we can expect Damian Hinds, the education secretary, and the Confederation of British Industry to praise the latest cohort of teenagers.

In the old days this made a bit more sense than it does today, because the aggregate results were better and better each year. No one knew how much of this was the result of better teaching, and how much was grade inflation, but it seemed a good idea to accentuate the positive.

Since Michael Gove’s changes to GCSEs in the coalition government, it has been harder to compare results from year to year. This year, most results will for the first time be in the new number grades, making comparisons harder still.

Of course, it is right to recognise the hard work of thousands of young people, but there are more important questions about the state of public exams in England, Wales and Northern Ireland.

As we report today, many parents are worried about the effect of exam stress on their children, and this merges with a common criticism, especially by teachers, that schools are increasingly “exam factories” in which “teaching to test” is squeezing out the joy of learning for its own sake.

Natasha Devon, the former government adviser on mental health who visits four schools a week, has said that academic anxiety has replaced body image worries as the number one reason pupils give for feelings of distress.

We need to be clear that some level of stress is unavoidable in any public examination system, as it is in life, but also that there are things that schools could be doing better.

GCSEs, whatever their curriculum and with whatever marking or grading schemes, are not the problem. If they are causing excessive anxiety, it may be that they are not being taught well. As any teacher knows, students learn best when they are enthusiastic and engaged. That is when they respond best to the high expectations placed on them and when they are most likely to enjoy being under some pressure to perform.

In the past, The Independent advocated doing away with GCSEs altogether. But that would simply transfer the pressure from public exams to schools’ own tests. There are many more important questions that need to be addressed: above all, how to spread the momentum of school improvement outwards from London to other parts of the country.

The solution to exam stress is not to reduce testing but to improve teaching.