Dear any schools that read this.

I think that standardized testing (gcse) is bad for all teenagers because it causes too much stress for them to cope with and to do the test, evidence of this is in the news as it has been reported on the BBC news website that teenagers who get stressed over gcse results get lower marks.  This affects coursework as well because students feel pressured to spend time and energy completing it,and they are unable to do any leisure activities that reduce the amount of stress they have. While it could be argued that they need to spend time revising, as a student that is soon taking GCSEs,that this stress of doing this coursework is also making me too tired to do the revision at the same time.

GCSEs do not actually help you to remember any relevant information for the future. Schools should be teaching us about how to do taxes, manage mortgages, fix cars, general life skills and things that can actually be used in the future, unlike algebra.Today it is more just copy and pasting information out of your mind. This is proved by the fact that once you leave secondary school or go on holiday most of that information is gone.

Tests are mostly for financial and political reasons. This is because four or five testing companies suchs as AQA, Pearson, City & Guild and EdExcel are constantly competing for schools to use them as exam boards. Most schools that are popular are usually able to get higher results in test scores because of teachers basically teaching their students the answers to the tests.

Parents often feel responsible for how their children do in their tests,when it is usually the school’s not understanding of how some students learn. For example, I get really low grades in maths:  I have to have something explained to me in simple steps or else I get confused. Usually every student is taught in one way, when it has been proven time and time again that this is simply not the case.

If I was able to change GCSEs, I would change them so that students would be tested on more relevant subjects helping them with whatever job they will do in the future. GCSEs have extremely strict rules such as turning around or looking at your friends will get you disqualified from the exam room. This is simply not feasible for teenagers because we are constantly looking for something to do.

While it can be said that it shows how much memories you can retain I find this unfair. memory and revision should not determine someone’s future, my opinion is that you should be able to do a sort of ‘essay’ on what you want to do and it could work as a sort of ‘CV’ for you in the future.