Boys do cry… 30% shed tears over exams

IT’S unlikely they’ll admit it to their mates, but almost a third of boys say they shed tears over exam stress.

As the summer exam season gets under way with GCSEs, three out of ten boys admit to becoming upset amid the pressure of sitting crucial papers and worrying about achieving good grades.

The National Citizen Service (NCS), which surveyed 1,000 16 to 17-year-olds, found that test pressure is ‘impacting teens to worrying levels’.

Among the 492 boys polled, 29 per cent said they have cried over exams, along with 73 per cent of teenage girls. Thirtyfour per cent of boys have felt sick before a paper and 39 per cent have felt so anxious before an exam they feared they could not sit it. This compared to 61 per cent for girls in both categories, according to the NCS, which provides activity programmes for teenagers.

Overall, 58 per cent of teenagers surveyed said their ‘biggest worry for the whole year is that they don’t achieve the exam results they want’. Parents were also polled, with more than a third saying they worried most about their children suffering exam stress.