- GCSE students are undergoing major changes in their brains while aged 16
- Professor Sarah-Jayne Blakemore described the exams as ‘extremely stressful’
- The UCL neuroscience expert was speaking yesterday at the Hay Festival
- She said the examinations are held at that time simply for historic reasons
GCSE exams should be scrapped because they come at exactly the wrong age for teenagers, an expert believes.
Professor Sarah-Jayne Blakemore said research shows 16-year-olds are undergoing seismic changes in the brain while they took the ‘extremely stressful’ exams.
As a result, it could leave many vulnerable to mental health problems, she said.
Professor Sarah-Jayne Blakemore said research shows 16-year-olds are undergoing seismic changes in the brain while they took the ‘extremely stressful’ exams.
Prof Blakemore said the tests could damage the mental health of 16-year-old students
The Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience at University College London told how research over the past two decades had changed understanding of brain development.
She said it was now believed that the composition of parts of the brain changed ‘hugely’ during adolescence.
Speaking at the Hay Festival, Professor Blakemore said: ‘Why do we still have GCSEs?
‘I think we always will have them for historic reasons.
‘But that’s no good reason to have an extremely stressful exam which, by the way, I think has become more stressful in the last ten years – just at an age where children are going through all this change in terms of brain, behaviour hormones and social changes, and rendering them very vulnerable to things like mental health problems.’
She added: ‘Given that our children now have to stay in some form of education until they’re 18, we don’t need those exams aged 16.’
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