For many Year 6 pupils, May doesn’t just bring the promise of summer; it brings the worry of May SATs. While a small amount of positive stress can be a motivator, the often high-stakes environment of SATs can push children toward chronic stress. This is a state that doesn’t just affect children’s test scores, which end up not representing what they actually know and understand, but can also affect their developing brains.
Understanding the Shift: Acute stress vs. Chronic stress
I think it is important to distinguish between a healthy flutter of nerves and a systemic problem where some children can end up thwarted in their learning, missing school, feeling inadequate and no longer enjoying the final year of their primary school journey.
Acute Stress is a short-term reaction to a specific event. The heart beats faster before a test paper, then returns to normal. This is seen as expected and can actually aid focus. It can also help prepare the child for the normal stresses and rigours of life, thus equipping them for their next educational phase and beyond. Short-term stress can build resilience and help a child to understand their own strengths and that they can cope with difficult things.
Simon Sinek shares a powerful perspective on the importance of allowing children to work through difficulties for themselves. He often argues that we cannot and should not ‘protect’ children into being strong; they must experience the friction of life for themselves to develop their own capabilities.
“Resilience is not the ability to avoid hardship, but the ability to thrive despite it. We don’t build grit by making things easy; we build it by doing hard things.”
Simon Sinek
In schools we do a lot to prepare our Year 6 pupils for coping with SATs week and for the new challenges they will begin to face as they move into secondary school. This work is commendable and in most cases works well enough.
Our role as adults isn’t to clear every obstacle from a child’s path. I believe that would be a disservice to their future selves. Instead, we must help them to see that the SATs should be a ‘manageable difficulty.’ By providing the right emotional scaffolding, we allow children to experience the friction of a challenge, proving to themselves that they are capable of doing hard things and coming out the other side intact and even refined in some ways. This is the very definition of grit – the quiet confidence that a child feels when they can think: ‘I have been through a challenge before, and I can do it again.’ But what of those that are suffering from chronic stress?
Chronic Stress is when a child feels under constant threat for weeks or even months. They are in a state of fear and this is often mixed with feelings of shame and isolation. The body stays in a ‘fight, flight, flock or freeze’ state, and this autonomic reflex floods the brain with cortisol and adrenalin. When a child is experiencing this they are not open to learning, to remembering or to growth. Things can become static time for the child, ironically at a time when they are expected to perform in order to show the culmination of their years of learning and growing throughout primary school.
“When we are in shame or fear, we are in a state of self-protection. And when we’re in self-protection, we’re not open to growth. We’re in ‘lockdown.’ You can’t learn when you’re in lockdown.”
Brené Brown
Vulnerability researcher Brené Brown famously noted that you cannot learn when your brain is in lockdown. For a Year 6 pupil, chronic stress isn’t just a heavy feeling, it is a biological wall. When the SATs are felt as a threat to their self worth or often to their school’s reputation, the child’s brain enters a state of self-protection. Chronic stress essentially hijacks the brain’s resources. Instead of learning how to use a semi-colon, the child’s brain is busy trying to manage the threat of disappointing their parents or failing their school.
In this lockdown state, the prefrontal cortex, which is the part of the brain we use to solve a complex word problem or remember a grammatical rule, effectively goes offline. If we want children to perform at their best, we must first ensure they feel safe enough to keep their ‘learning brain’ open. But how do we know when a child has moved from acute to chronic?
The warning signs for educators and parents/carers
Some children may be able to articulate how they are feeling and what they are afraid of. Having meaningful relationships and time to talk will help to encourage the type of conversation where adults may be able to ‘nip in the bud’ anxiety in the early stages. As we know, early intervention is key. But without a child being able to speak about their worries, often because they are not completely sure of them, the following signs might help us to recognise and respond quickly:
- Physical: Recurring stomach aches, headaches, or a sudden change in appetite.
- Emotional: Heightened irritability, emotional (e.g., crying easily), or a ‘flat’, non-engaged mood.
- Behavioural: Regression (e.g., bedwetting), sleep disturbances, or school refusal tendencies.
What can schools and parents/carers do?
Schools are under immense pressure to perform, but we need to remember that a child’s mental health is the foundation of their academic success, not an obstacle to it. We can easily engage strategies with our children both in school and at home to ensure they do not get to the point where they feel the chronic stress that will prevent them from thriving over this time and beyond:
- De-escalate the language: Avoid phrases like ‘this will determine your future’. Instead, frame SATs as a ‘check-point’ for the school, not a label for the child.
- The soft start: Consider Breakfast Clubs or Celebration Breakfasts during SATs week to ensure children have eaten and feel socially connected before the papers begin. (This is a good opportunity to give the children foods that will help to keep them focused and energised.)
- Brain breaks: Explicitly teach mindfulness, breathing and grounding techniques. A 5-minute breathing exercise before a test can lower cortisol levels enough to unlock the ‘thinking’ part of the brain (the prefrontal cortex).
- Curriculum balance: Keep the less academic subjects (Art, PE, Music) on the timetable. Stripping the curriculum down to just English and Maths signals to children that their other talents don’t matter.
At home, you can be the emotional thermostat. If you are anxious, your child will notice and reflect that.
- Be their cheerleader: At home, they need a parent who values their kindness and creativity over their punctuation, give them time away from studying and revising to notice their other qualities.
- The ‘Power of Yet’: Use Growth Mindset language. Remember words matter and your child believes what you say about them. You can say sentences like “You haven’t mastered long division yet,” rather than “You’re bad at Maths” in order to encourage them.
- Protect their sleep: Chronic stress thrives on exhaustion. Ensure good sleep hygiene by having a ‘digital sunset’ at least an hour before bed, no screens, just stories, quiet talk or a breathing exercise to calm the mind.
- Normalise failure and set backs: Share stories of your own mistakes or challenging tests and how you learned and grew from them. Help them to realise that their identity is not linked to their SATs score. Help them to see themselves holistically.
Researcher and child psychologist Dr Carol Dweck sends a message to parents on what to gift their children as they face challenge:
“If parents want to give their children a gift, the best thing they can do is to teach their children to love challenges, be intrigued by mistakes, enjoy effort, and keep on learning.”
And finally a message to the children
We want children to understand that they are far more than a data point. A test cannot measure their bravery, their sense of humor or what a good friend they make. Those are the things that help make them who they are and can remain forever; SATs are just for a week.
Nip in the Bud encourages any parent or teacher who notices a child struggling significantly to seek early support. By recognising the signs of chronic stress now, we can ensure that a single week in May doesn’t cast a long shadow over a child’s love for learning.
As adults our goal should be to keep children in a state of calm alertness and curiosity to develop them as life-long learners. We can all do this by reminding them that while the SATs are a task to be completed, they are not a definition of who they are now or who they are going to be in the future. As educators and parents, we must champion the ‘non-testable’ qualities we see in our children every day – their resilience, empathy, kindness and curiosity. Every child who feels valued for who they are is far more likely to have the cognitive freedom to succeed in what they do.
Alis Rocca
Education Consultant.
