EXAMS REVISED IDEAS
HIGH-ACHIEVING SCHOOLS are often characterised as “exam factories” where young people are hot-housed and crammed to within an inch of their lives to ensure an abundance of A*s.
It is not an image I recognise, here, or at other ambitiously academic schools I know. To encourage bright students to achieve their best, they must be inspired, not ground down. Superb teaching can spark their curiosity and light a fire which allows them to take risks, think outside the box and revel in what they are doing in class.
It might not all be plain sailing. Students who fly through primary school may well come to a point where they no longer feel up to studying a certain subject. If this happens, they need our understanding and support.
Harvard University research shows us confidence is critical to student success. Good schools recognise where children need help and take measures to boost that self-belief. With this in mind, North London Collegiate recently reviewed our maths marking policy to ensure it promotes a can-do attitude. We started to include positive com
ments on all work, acknowledging small achievements and celebrating when students reached milestones, treating pupils as individual learners, rather than a cohort with an academic target. The happy by-product was an outstanding set of maths GCSE results: 68 per cent of girls at grade nine and 97 per cent at nine or eight.
Another important ingredient of excellence is a varied curriculum, offering a range of qualifications, to ensure students have a choice and feel in charge of their own destiny. As well as A-levels and the Cambridge Pre-U, the International Baccalaureate has been a central part of our sixth form for 15 years. Its breadth and academic rigour is a perfect fit for some girls.
Good schools challenge their students to think widely, develop independent research skills and aim high. Academic enrichment encourages girls to think more widely and adds a deeper layer to the more superficial knowledge in exam syllabuses. The feeling of preparedness this develops can guard against extreme exam stress.
Extracurricular activities bolster classroom work and provide a distraction. At NLCS, sixth-form students are in charge of their own societies and the list is long (over 40) and eclectic, from environmental awareness and medical ethics to literary and philosophy. Sixth formers and staff run clubs for middle and upper school girls, including magic club and tag rugby.
Only by bringing together these vital elements of academic rigour, breadth and depth, targeted help and support and stress-busting activities can schools provide the environment necessary for students to excel. If schools are obsessed by exam results to the detriment of everything else and pupils’ lives are overshadowed by the looming spectre of the exam hall, it is likely to have the opposite of the desired effect.
Students must be inspired not ground down’