As a parent myself, I don’t think the answer is to remove all pressure from children.
Children need challenge. They need to experience finding something difficult, getting something wrong, being stuck and discovering that they can work through it.
But there is a huge difference between challenge and anxiety.
Good pressure says:
“This is difficult, but I can do something about it.”
Bad pressure says:
“If I don’t succeed at this, I’ve failed.”
That’s the distinction I think we sometimes lose.
What I see as a teacher and tutor
I’ve taught for many years, and one thing I’ve noticed is that children often aren’t frightened of the actual work, they’re frightened of what the result represents.
A mock result becomes more than a mock.
A grade becomes a judgement about whether they’re “clever”.
Being put in a lower set can feel like somebody has decided what they’re capable of.
And children compare themselves constantly, with friends, predicted grades and sometimes with expectations at home.
I think as adults, we have to be very careful about the language we use around achievement.
A mock exam should be information.
It tells us: Where are you now? Where did you lose marks? What can we change?
It isn’t a verdict on a child.
Sometimes as adults, we accidentally create the pressure
We want to help, but sometimes our anxiety becomes their anxiety.
We ask:
“What did everyone else get?”
“What grade did your friend get?”
And even when those questions come from love, a child can hear:
“Your result really matters to me.”
Sometimes a better conversation is:
“What did you learn from that?”
“What are you going to do differently next time?”
“Is there anything you need help with?”
That shifts the focus from performance to progress. Confidence grows when progress happens.
More work isn’t always the answer
One of the biggest misconceptions around exams is that success means doing enormous amounts of revision.
I don’t think it does.
I would much rather see a student do a focused piece of work, discover exactly what they don’t understand, practise it properly and then stop.
There has to be an end to the working day.
Young people need sleep. They need friends. They need hobbies. They need evenings when they aren’t thinking about GCSEs.
Rest isn’t the opposite of working hard.
Rest is part of working effectively.
But I also don’t think we should remove every difficulty
This is the other side of the conversation.
Sometimes, because we are worried about children’s wellbeing, adults step in very quickly when a child struggles.
But being stuck is part of learning.
I’ve experienced this myself doing difficult mathematics. You sit there thinking, “I genuinely don’t know how to do this.”
Then eventually something connects.
That moment is incredibly valuable.
If every time a child gets stuck somebody immediately explains the answer, reassures them or removes the difficult task, they don’t get to discover:
“I was stuck! But I got myself unstuck.”
That’s where confidence actually comes from.
What I’d like children to understand
Your GCSEs matter.
Your A-levels matter.
Working hard matters.
But they are things you are doing. They are not who you are.
A disappointing result isn’t evidence that you’re not intelligent.
It’s information.
Use it.
Work out what went wrong, make a plan and take the next step.
And then go home, close the books and live the rest of your life.
Final thoughts
I don’t think our goal should be to raise children who never experience pressure.
The world will give them pressure.
Our job is to help them develop the confidence and skills to cope with it.
So perhaps the question isn’t:
“How do we remove pressure from children?”
It’s:
“How do we give children challenge without making them believe that their worth depends on the outcome?”
For me, that’s the balance.