By Dominic Tomalin, Founding Headmaster, Shrewsbury School India

Understanding how to manage and mitigate examination stress is the only way to demonstrate your true learning and potential in the examination hall. I have sat more examinations than I care to remember, and as a teacher, I have successfully prepared students for many more across a range of subjects and grades. In this article, I offer a few suggestions for how to deal with examination stress.

Reframe your perspective

Not all stress is bad. We are used to talking about stress in terms of distress. We rarely talk about eustress – a psychological term for positive responses to stress that can enhance performance. To find eustress amid the distress about being examined, you need to reframe your perspective. You must think of examinations as opportunities, not threats. Consider them a chance to showcase what you have learned and to discover the next best step for you as an individual. Once you reframe your perspective, you will be better motivated to prepare thoroughly and perform optimally.

Make the most of learning opportunities along the way

The most effective way to prepare for examinations is to actively and sincerely participate in the learning process. Show up, get the work done, test your understanding. Even if you think you’ve understood, ask; ‘Am I correct in thinking that...?’, and ‘I’m sorry, I don’t understand, could you go over that again?’ These are two of the best but least used questions in classrooms. I guarantee that you will be doing yourself, your classmates and your teacher a favour every time you ask these questions.

When you are tested during the course, the result should give you and your teacher a good idea of your progress. Make sure you understand your teacher’s feedback and insist that they explain how to get a better grade. This will build confidence in understanding how to craft your answers to best meet the grade schemes applied by the examiners.

Revise Effectively

I get frustrated when I see students head down over their notes revising. This approach doesn’t work. Effective revision requires active engagement with the content.

Using cue cards and developing mind maps are more effective than passive reading and highlighting. Organising concepts, ideas and methods on paper helps to organise them in your mind; it improves the way the knowledge is encoded.

Whilst distilling your notes assists with encoding, to be effective in the examination room you need to be proficient in retrieval under pressure.  This will only come with practice. You need to practice by completing exam style questions under self-imposed exam conditions. Be brutal when you are self-marking.  In addition to correcting, always ask ‘why’ you missed out on marks – an honest answer will guide you in remedying the issue.

Look after yourself

Throughout your revision period, schedule in sleep, at least 8 hours a night. You must also ensure that you eat nutritious meals and make time to exercise. Research shows that sensible sleep patterns, a good diet, and exercise improve learning, and so are also essential for doing well in examinations.

These suggestions above have helped me and my students. However, at the most fundamental level, positive motivation comes from understanding that examinations are just steps along the way to realising your ambitions. At Shrewsbury International School India, we recognise that finding your purpose is a key prerequisite to success, not just achievement in examinations but in ‘life’. That is why we provide a whole-person education at a campus designed to provide young people with opportunities to explore where their talents and interests lie and then take them towards mastery.

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