It’s not just exams that pressure students. It’s the fear of letting us down

Simply telling students to “stress less” is not enough.

A student once told me, “I think I don’t really sleep well the night before exams… I don’t know if I am prepared enough, whether I would just panic in the exam and just forget everything.”

For her, the stress was tied partly to the possibility of not meeting her teacher’s expectations. Yet she also described how that same stress pushed her to work harder to prove to her teachers that she can do better.

Another student spoke about stress in relation to his family: “I [am] scared I fail then my family [will be] disappointed… I can’t really study well. I keep on thinking about it.”

What struck me was not simply that these students were stressed. It was what stress meant to them, how closely it was tied to the people who mattered to them, and how differently it affected each of them.

These were familiar themes in interviews that we conducted with 55 secondary students. Their stress is often connected to things and people they deeply value: doing well for their teachers, making their families proud, or living up to expectations they have set for themselves.

Stress rooted in care and responsibility can become so overwhelming that students struggle to sleep, concentrate or perform. Yet, in other circumstances, that same stress can push them to prepare, persist and work harder.

Simply telling students to “stress less” is therefore not enough. We also need to teach them how to understand the stress they feel, what it can do to them and what to do with it.

Not “just an examination”

In the OECD’s PISA 2015 study, 86 per cent of Singapore students said they worried about getting poor grades, compared with an OECD average of 66 per cent. More than three in four felt anxious about tests even when well prepared. Research I have been involved in at the National Institute of Education (NIE) has similarly identified examinations, workload, and assignments as leading sources of stress among students here.

However, two students can face the same examination and experience stress differently.

One thinks: I’m stressed because I’m going to fail.

Another thinks: I’m stressed because this matters to me and my loved ones. I need to prepare.

What differs is not necessarily the stress, but the meaning attached to it.

An examination is rarely “just an examination” to a young person. A disappointing grade can feel like a judgement of one’s ability, a failure to meet parents’ expectations or a door closing on future opportunities.

Research at NIE found that academic stress associated with the expectations of parents and teachers, unlike students’ own expectations, was linked with poorer student well-being.

As one student put it: “A lot of people are expecting a lot from us, in terms of like studying. So those kinds of thoughts really feed into our brain and kind of like it, it might affect how we study as well, our physical well-being...I would say like our parents’ expectations may be higher than what we expect to get.”

Yet such pressure may also stem from affection and filial obligation: “I feel like if I don’t get the expected grades right, I feel that my parents’ hard work goes to waste.”

Stress coping

Our research at NIE also examined what psychologists call a “stress mindset”: whether people see stress as entirely debilitating or recognise that it can sometimes be enhancing.

Students who recognise that stress can motivate them and help them grow tend to report better well-being and resilience, and cope with challenges more actively. 

Many adults will recognise this. A deadline can sharpen our concentration. Nervousness before a presentation can make us prepare more thoroughly. Stress can sometimes signal that something matters and mobilise us to respond.

But a student who believes stress is always harmful may interpret difficulty sleeping, sweaty palms or a racing heart as evidence that something is wrong: I shouldn’t feel this way. I can’t do this.

Worrying about stress can then add to the stress itself.

This does not mean telling students that stress is “good”. Chronic or overwhelming stress can harm well-being, and no amount of positive reframing of stress makes an unreasonable workload reasonable.

There is also a danger in framing resilience solely as a mindset issue, as we risk placing the responsibility for coping with stress entirely on the child.

If a student believes one poor result could derail his future, his anxiety is not necessarily a failure of resilience. It may reflect what he believes is genuinely at stake.

Rather, students need to understand that stress can be both a warning and a resource – and learn to recognise which one it is. 

Parents and teachers can help young people develop a constructive view of stress by sharing personal experiences in which stress prompted learning, adaptation, or growth. For example, they might describe how taking on a demanding new responsibility motivated them to acquire new skills or seek support from others, in the process strengthening relationships, or how managing multiple deadlines helped them develop better planning, prioritisation, and time-management skills. 

In our NIE study, students described how their parents’ stories and perspectives shaped the way they understood and responded to stress. One student reflected: “I have learned from my father that stress is a double-edged sword…He encouraged me to use stress properly… So, when I am stressed, I try to look at it from another perspective.”

Such conversations can give young people a way to make sense of difficult experiences. Research suggests that stories shared by adults, whether drawn from personal experience or fiction, can help children develop resilience and ways to cope. For parents, sharing how they navigated a setback, and what helped them through it, can be a powerful starting point.

At the same time, stress can encourage students to put in more effort and explore new ways of thinking about and responding to challenging situations, helping them build confidence and develop greater competence in handling future challenges.

Pre-exam nerves might be channelled into preparation and focus. But when stress becomes relentless, interferes with daily life or leaves a student unable to function, it needs to be reduced, and support sought.

The stress-free myth

Singapore has spent years evolving its education system to support holistic development and meaningful learning. The ongoing Education Conversations invite the public to give views on shifting emphasis away from academic grades.

Schools have also placed greater emphasis on student well-being. The Character and Citizenship Education (CCE) curriculum includes Mental Health Education lessons to equip students with the mindsets, habits and skills – such as differentiating between stress and distress – to strengthen their mental well-being and resilience.

Yet academic anxiety persists.

Student stress cannot be tackled by changing the system, the family culture, or the student in isolation. A meaningful response must work across all three levels.

A parent or teacher may never say, “You have failed me.” But disappointment can still be conveyed in subtler ways – through comparisons with others, silence at the dinner table or the immediate search for another tuition class.

A better option, according to research, is to acknowledge that setbacks are part of learning and to focus on encouragement, efforts, strategies, and growth. Children are very good at reading what adults value. We cannot tell our children that marks do not define them while organising their lives as though every mark does.

But we must also prepare young people for a reality that cannot be made entirely stress-free. There will still be examinations, deadlines, competition and disappointing results. Later, there will be job interviews, workplace pressures and other challenges that cannot simply be removed.

The goal of education cannot be to produce a generation that never feels stressed. It should be to produce young people who know what to think and do when they are.

Dr Imelda Santos Caleon, Principal Education Research Scientist, Science of Learning in Education Centre, National Institute of Education

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