Why the British Education System Is Deeply Flawed: A Sixteen-Year-Old's Story

My name is Holly. I am 16 years old. I am in year 11. And recently, I have discovered a lot about the British education system.

For those unfamiliar with the British way of things, year 11 is the last year of high school. It is the year we take our GCSE exams, which results determine where we can go for sixth form (two more years of schooling), go for college (a specific course, usually non-academic), or start an apprenticeship. They are stressful, discriminatory, and unfair exams. And this year, they just got a whole lot harder.

Let's start with year 7, the first year of high school.

You are eleven years old. At this point you are expected to take all subjects: a mixture of maths and music and geography and P.E. It is hard to adjust to the newly-large amount of homework you get, but most teachers are lenient with deadlines if you can't quite make it. You make new friends, you lose old ones; you are scared of all the bigger kids, the year 11s, because they seem so tall and angry and tired, but they mainly ignore you so you ignore them too. Life is changing. It is more exciting. Sometime during the year you stop missing primary school. You grow up much quicker than you ever thought you could.

Then year 8 starts. More homework, quicker deadlines, more work, less time. This is the year you finally learn all the classroom numbers, or at least your way from one side of the school to the other. Friendship groups rearrange and shuffle and you probably get your first girlfriend/boyfriend. You probably don't like them as much as your friends think you do. You probably get detentions for forgetting your library book or not doing a piece of homework. You look down on the year 7s and forget that you used to be in their position less than a year ago.

Year 9. This is the year you really need to start paying attention in class, but no one does, because GCSEs are two years away and who will remember all this anyway? Won't we learn the more important stuff later, anyway? You start learning GCSE science and maths and English material, things you need to be able to recall in two years time. You don't remember it half an hour after your class, but that's okay, right? You finally have a better sense of style than your year 7 self. You probably have a new haircut. You're probably single again, but don't really care. You start doodling (even more) during boring classes. Then you get to pick your options for GCSE: maths, English, and science you have to take. But the rest you can pick. You probably take art because it sounds relaxing. And psychology or sociology or law or business because it's new. You stick with your old favourite subject. And your mum or dad make you take a language because it'll help you get into better sixth forms, trust us. It will. You'll thank us later.

Year 10 is strangely easier than you thought it would be. Yeah, you get more homework, and yeah, you get less time to do it. And there's always some drama going on in your friendship group that you'r trying not to get involved in but somehow are anyway. But everything seems... calm. You thought it would be stressful. But so far, the only stress you've had is realising that the options you took are ones you hate.

But then mock exams start. You actually have to sit in the gym at those weird desks that look like American high school desks. You realise you can't read clocks. You manage to lose your only black pen, or your scientific calculator, or your protractor, and you only have 10 minutes before your exam starts. Is this how stressful the real thing will be? Why can't you put your locker keys on your desk? How come there are only two answer lines for a question you need at least ten to answer?

And the revision! You've never worked this hard in your life! You made your own revision timetable and then cried when you realised there was no way following it would actually work. Your mum tested you against some flashcards you made whilst your siblings avoided you because you were stressing them out, but what do they have to stress about? You have MOCKS. These are the most important things in your life. You revise and revise and forget about your art coursework because you don't have an actual exam, right? Right?

Then year 11 starts.

You have been told that this year will go very quickly, and you doubt it. But then suddenly it's October and your mocks are soon so it's time to start revising again. You watch TV with Spanish audio and listen to Spanish podcasts in the hope that you will become fluent before your exams. Your art slacks and then suddenly you realise that you have twenty-four more pages to fill in your sketchbook by Friday, and it's Thursday. Your favourite subject is somehow both your most hated and worst. The new subject is your best, but only because it's still new and exciting and you find it funny how annoyed your friends are that they didn't take it. You have a strange mixture of passed and failed exams but with the new grading system, does anyone really understand? A girl in your maths class gets an 8 and suddenly acts like she's got into Oxford. A boy in your geography class got one mark more than you and now he rubs it in your face every time you see him.

You hate this school even more than before.

Sixth form applications have to be in soon and even though you've asked countless times, your school still hasn't given you your predicted grades. When you finally get them, you bump up a couple of grades, because you can work hard to get them, right? You write a personal response about all your achievements and then feel weird for having to boast about how good you are. You wonder why you haven't gotten any responses even though it's been two days since you sent in an application. You cry and worry and have your first breakdown because what if you don't get in? What if you fail all your GCSEs? What if you fail at life?

Christmas break is like a blessing because you can eat and relax and finally catch up on your art homework, but also a curse because your teacher set you a 24-mark history essay and you have 8 pages of revision for English and your French teacher gave you two pages of vocabulary to learn. You leave it all to the last day and then do the rest after school on the first day back. You regret not making that geography composite bar graph for your fieldwork booklet because now you realise you have no idea how to draw one and it's due in first period tomorrow morning. You cry again because you don't understand science for the fifth time this week and try to revise when you get home but end up scrolling pointlessly down your Twitter feed whilst listening to some song you hate the tune of but relate to the lyrics. People are already talking about prom and their dresses and one girl has spent £210 on a blue ballgown and is travelling there in a chariot and while you are listening to her tell you this you are thinking about the psychology test you need to study for when you get home and the new highlighters you need to buy because your obsessive revision has used them all up and the pages you need to rip out of your sketchbook because you're worried they're not good enough.

Nothing is ever good enough.

You go to an interview for sixth form and end up being shy and awkward and although your grades are okay, are they good enough? You get conditional offers which don't make you feel any better and then worry your friends will get unconditional ones to your first choice school even though it's their third choice. You attend a taster session and love it but then worry that everyone seemed much smarter than you or that you will always get lost or you won't make any new friends. You have no time to revise anymore because of the interviews and taster days and homework you are getting, and the revision sessions you attend at lunch and after school mean you have no free time, and then at some point you get a cold because there's a bug going round and you're still overworking and it makes it worse and then...

You cry at school. In class. You want to go home because your throat hurts and you're shaking and you can't concentrate on the work and you tried to write a sentence and it didn't make sense. But you also have four more classes after this and you can't miss them because then you would have to catch up and do even more work when you could just do it now. You end up going to the office, but you don't look unwell enough. You need a glass of water, according to them, and maybe some fresh air and some food but the thing is you walked to school in the freezing cold and had too-big a breakfast that you could hardly eat at 6:30am and you've been drinking all morning because your throat is so painful that it hurts to cry.

You go to your form tutor, and she makes the office send you home. You're overworking, and she knows it. And she tells you not to come into school tomorrow. And to ask your teachers if you can skip some pieces of homework. And possibly to ask your parents if they'll take you to the doctors because you think she thinks you're going to have a mental breakdown. You're probably already having one.

So. Have you noticed that as this goes on, and as you progress from one year to the next your life becomes less about you and more about school?

They tell us it's for the future, for good jobs and university degrees and money and happiness. It's worth it to work hard now and benefit later. It's always about 'when you're older'.

But why not now? Why are we being starved of our childhoods, our teenage years, for nothing more than a number on a piece of paper?

Why are we being forced to get up early and go to bed late when our bodies are telling us we need sleep?

Why do we have to work hard for things we might not even want or need?

And why does the government not care about us? Why do they make exams harder every year? Do they want us to suffer? To fail?

The British education system is flawed in the fact that although it is designed and built for students, it does not respect us.

So tonight I will finish one more page in my sketchbook, and make some more flashcards on the Spanish tenses, and draw up another graph for my geography fieldwork. I will not get to talk to my friends. I will not get to watch my favourite TV programme, even though an episode is only 20 minutes long. I will not get to read a book or write my book or go on a much-needed run.

Instead I will stay at home, in my room, and carry on working until my eyes droop shut and I finally fall asleep.