Parents, stop stressing your children out before the Secondary Entrance Assessment examination.
This was the call of clinical psychologist Dianne Douglas while speaking on CNC3’s the Morning Brew on Wednesday.
A total of 18,849 students will sit the exam on April 4, which will determine their placement in the secondary school system.
Douglas said many of her conversations with children in exam classes usually involved a plea for their parents to stop placing additional stress on them.
“Please speak to our parents and tell them to stop our parents from making us so stressed. When you talk to our parents the number one word is stress, “ said Douglas.
“We are talking about children who are having nightmares, who are hyperventilating, who are unable to relax,” she said.
Douglas said the weight placed on SEA also created severe issues which perpetuate into the thinking of pupils throughout their school lives.
“This three-hour exam does not determine the rest of your life, but that is the myth that they are being sold. It is being set up as this life and death situation and what happens is children now pattern all their exams after on this,” said Douglas, who also explained that the stress continues even after the exam is over, as major anxiety is created while students await results, here he said parents also needed to play a key role in easing concerns.
“It is really important that parents be the buffer and not the cause of the stress. And not only parents but also the teachers as well,” said Douglas, who gave some tips for parents going into next week.
Sending children for additional lesson classes was not one of them.
“This next week as they come into the exam take the pressure off, parents. The night before the exam please allow the children to just relax. Watch a little television, play outside, play video games,” said Douglas.
She also felt the Ministry of Education was also culpable in creating stress-inducing situations through the highlighting of the top placed students and publishing of results in the newspaper.
“The Ministry of Education gives permission to media houses to publish the results of the children, we don’t even do that at University level,” said Douglas, who said University would use codes to provide privacy for students.
“For some reason, our children are not afforded that same dignity,” she said.
HELPFUL TIPS
The International Stress Management Association recommended these tips for students preparing for examinations:
1. Avoid panic. It’s natural to feel some exam nerves prior to starting the exam, but getting excessively nervous is counter-productive as you will not be able to think as clearly.
2. The quickest and most effective way of eliminating feelings of stress and panic is to close your eyes and take several long, slow deep breaths. Breathing in this way calms your whole nervous system. Simultaneously you could give yourself some mental pep-talk repeating, ‘I am relaxed or I know I will do fine.”
3. If your mind goes blank, don’t panic. Panicking will just make it harder to recall information. Move on to another question and return to this question later.
4. After the exam don’t spend endless time criticising yourself for where you think you went wrong. Often our own self-assessment is far too harsh. Congratulate yourself for the things you did right, learn from the bits where you know you could have done better, and then move on.