The Views of Young People about an Intervention Programme Designed to Support Them with Exam Related Anxiety and Stress

Both preparing for and sitting exams can be extremely stressful for children and young people. Whilst the research within the area of exam anxiety acknowledges the detrimental impact that it can have on individuals, much of the research has been completed with university students. Limited research has been carried out with children and young people. In addition to this, there is also little research that has been completed in order to understand which interventions are helpful in reducing exam anxiety in young people. The systematic literature review highlighted that much of the research employed quantitative techniques. This means young people’s views and experiences of exam anxiety has largely been unexplored. The EPS service in which the TEP currently works is a partially traded service. Some of the schools that had bought a service level agreement requested support for certain pupils that were experiencing exam anxiety. The EPS service therefore delivered an intervention called ‘beating exam anxiety together’ (further details of this intervention can be found within chapter 1). Seven semi-structured interviews were carried out with GCSE students who took part in the ‘beating exam anxiety together’ intervention. The purpose of the interviews was to understand more about young people’s views on exam anxiety, and also their experiences of the intervention in which they took part. The research highlighted the possible detrimental impact of exam anxiety on young people in terms of their mental health, and also how able they feel to prepare for their exams. The results of the research interestingly showed that young people experience high levels of pressure from school teachers and also their parents. Furthermore, students reported that they didn't know how to revise. The results revealed that young people feel that the way in which exams are spoken about in schools is largely negative. As a result of this, the researcher suggested that it may be helpful to shift the narrative around the way in which exams are currently spoken about. In addition to this, the results indicate that the intervention was largely helpful in improving young people’s well being and their ability to be able to manage exam anxiety.

A Cultural Approach to a Canadian Tragedy: The Indian Residential Schools as a Sacred Enterprise

For over a century, the Canadian state funded a church-run system of residential schools designed to assimilate Aboriginal children into Euro-Canadian culture. In addition to the problems associated with its ethnocentric philosophy, the school system was also characterised by terrible health conditions and physical and sexual abuse of the students was widespread. Recently, the schools have been the object of the most successful struggle for redress in Canadian history. One particularly puzzling aspect about the school system is that it persisted for so long, despite that many of its failings were known very early in its operation. In this article, this puzzle is addressed via a cultural analysis of a political struggle over the residential schools that occurred within Canadian Anglicanism at the outset of the twentieth century. The article concludes that the meaning of the school system as a sacred enterprise contributed to its persistence.