Abingdon News No.50

20 April 2019 Pressure, Perfectionism, Performance anxiety – a pastoral perspective Mark Hindley, Deputy Head (Pastoral) Abingdon Pastoral It is easy to forget that many people revel in pressure: going on stage after weeks of rehearsals, running out for a local derby match, hearing the auditorium swell with the solo you have dreamt of performing – all of these can be moments of real exhilaration that can be affirming and incredibly satisfying. So too with academia and school life. If you have worked hard for a test or an exam, and feel confident in your preparation, then turning over the paper and seeing your ideal question can be a very positive experience. How can we help? The issue comes if you feel that there is too much riding on it, or if you feel that the task before you is overwhelming or unmanageable. It doesn’t take much for your moment in the limelight to shift from a dream into a nightmare where you are exposed to public humiliation and ridicule. Desirable difficulty is something we should embrace, but with exams looming how do we help students to keep a sense of perspective and an appropriately positive attitude? Critically, we all need to remember that pupils will feed off the approach of adults. All children know that there is a lot that is riding on exams – as staff, and perhaps more crucially as parents, we need to make sure that we aren’t underplaying their importance and being patronising about what students are feeling as exam season looms. Equally we need children to know that their worth is not dependent on an external stamp of approval. Pupils need to know their parents’ love is not dependent on grades, and their value to the school isn’t defined by whether they are an A* candidate or an Oxbridge place holder. Enjoy the Journey Perhaps we should take a lesson from the sports’ psychologists: we need to embrace the process, rather than being too focused on the outcome. In the hurly-burly of a teenager’s life it is easy for him to get so obsessed by his desired destination that he forgets to enjoy the journey. The important thing is not what the exam results are, but what has been learnt in the process. Can your child look at themselves and say that they worked as hard as they possibly could? If they can then they have done excellently, whatever appears on the results’ slip; if they can’t say they worked hard, it might be that they will learn more from that setback than if they had squeaked an extra grade here or there.