Year 12 exams

start today. 

I usually know more than one student who will be sitting for them. I will have been giving one or two a bit of extra help or talking to anxious parents. I see them in the local library with their heads down. I hear the sighs and the looks which say, "I wish this was all over."

And of course this year has probably been the most stressful of all for  any year twelve student. For some there have been months away from school.  Even with all the plans schools put in place it has been more difficult for most students. They have been used to the discipline of going to school, of a timetable decided by others, of having their friends around them in the classroom and at breaks.

Suddenly having to work on their own, perhaps with younger siblings also at home,  has been extremely stressful. Not all of them have coped as well as they thought they might but others have found it gave them a sense of achievement and even freedom.

Ms W has a way to go before year twelve. She is perhaps a natural student. She likes to learn. Spending time on school work is not an issue for her. "Maybe if I discover boys," she told me mischievously when we were talking about it. She knows boys of course. She also knows that a good number of the girls in the years above her are permitted to go out in groups with male friends and that one or two may even go out in pairs. (Her school does not encourage that during the school terms but it does encourage learning and socialising together in other ways.)

For her working from home was not an issue. She did not want to go back to school as she felt she was achieving more at home - and her teachers agreed. Yes, she missed her friends - although they were communicating in other ways - but she could "just get on with it". 

Her father told her that it was a good indication of whether she would do well at university. There she will, if she chooses to go, be responsible for her own learning.

And perhaps this is something good which will come out of the Covid19 situation for other students. They will have discovered whether they can be responsible for their own learning, whether they can discipline themselves to work rather than have external discipline imposed on them.  Is it possible some of those year twelve students have matured more than they otherwise might and that next year's university students will be more capable? It would be really good to think that might happen.