Hi Reader

If your household feels emotionally exhausted right now, you are not alone.

Over the last week, I’ve seen students move from confidence to panic to relief and back again, sometimes all within the same lesson.

After one exam, a student told me:
“I couldn’t have wished for better.”

Another said:
“I prefer character essays to themes!”

Meanwhile, inboxes and lessons have been full of conversations like this:

It is such a familiar part of exam season.

Students replay questions endlessly afterwards. They remember the quotation they should have used three hours too late. They compare answers with friends. They convince themselves that one difficult question has ruined everything.

As an examiner, I can honestly say this:
students are often very poor judges of how they have actually performed.

Every year, students leave exams convinced they have done badly and later achieve excellent grades.

And even now, with only days to go before Language Paper 2, messages are still arriving from anxious students asking whether they can squeeze in one more practice question, one more piece of feedback, one more bit of reassurance before Thursday afternoon.

Right now, the most important things are:

• recovery
• perspective
• sleep
• steady preparation for the remaining papers

And this pressure is not limited to Year 11.

Some of my younger students are currently sitting end-of-year exams and mock exams and feeling many of the same emotions. One parent recently emailed me to say:

That sentence stayed with me because it highlights something important:
most young people are trying incredibly hard.

Behind the scenes, they are carrying a huge amount of pressure: from themselves, from school, from social media, from comparison, and often simply from wanting to make the adults around them proud.

So if your child is tired, emotional, overthinking, or lacking confidence right now, please know that this is incredibly normal.

I’ve also been deeply touched by the kindness of parents during this busy season. One message I received this week read:

Thank you. Messages like that mean a great deal.

For now, we keep going one paper at a time.

Verity Bell
GCSE English Examiner & Tutor

P.S. If your child is struggling with confidence before the remaining exams, do feel free to reply to this email. I may be limited on time during exam season, but I will always try to help where I can.