Creating assessments and exam success — Part 2: Helping students perform in exams

A well-designed exam is only half the work. The other half is whether students can actually show what they know on the day.

Many students who genuinely understand the material still do badly in exams. Their hand was shaking. The room was too hot. They had not eaten breakfast. The exam paper looked nothing like what they had practised. Their nerves swallowed everything they had learned.

For students in challenging circumstances, exams are often high-stakes — their futures may genuinely depend on them. And often, these students have less experience of formal exams, less time to prepare at home, and harsher physical conditions on the day.

In Part 2 of this series, we will look at three stages of exam support: before the exam (preparation), during the exam (conditions), and after the exam (feedback that feeds forward). None of this is about cheating or lowering standards. It is about giving every student a fair chance to show what they have learned.

Host: We have just looked at three stages of exam support. Now listen to three teachers. They share their problems first, then the changes they made.

Teacher 1: Every year I would prepare students for exams by going over content. Reading the textbook, going through grammar, reviewing vocabulary. But on the day, students panicked. They did not know how to manage their time. They did not understand what the questions wanted. They had never seen an exam paper close up before walking into the room. The format was the problem — not the content.

Teacher 2: Our exam room was hot. The students were sweating. The windows had old posters covering them, blocking out the light. By the second hour, students were yawning, fading. Their handwriting got messier. Their answers got shorter. I never connected this to the room itself. I just thought they were lazy or unprepared.

Teacher 3: I always handed back exam papers with marks at the top. The students looked at their marks. They put the papers in their bags. We moved on. Three months later, the same students made the same mistakes again. Year after year. I had no idea I was wasting all that information.

Teacher 1: I started running practice exams — not full exams, just 30-minute samples with the same kinds of tasks. We talked about timing. We talked about what each question was really asking. The students who used to panic now walked in calmly. They knew what to do. Their marks went up — not because they knew more, but because they could now show what they knew.

Teacher 2: I took the posters down from the windows. I opened all the doors. I asked students to bring water bottles. I let them wear lighter clothes. The first time we tried it, the room felt different — lighter, fresher, calmer. Students wrote more. They stayed focused longer. Such small changes, such a big difference.

Teacher 3: I started taking 15 minutes of the next lesson to go through the most common mistakes. I would not give individual feedback — I could not, with 50 students. But the whole class would learn from those common errors. I also showed one or two example good answers. The students who had failed had something to aim for. Their next exams were better, and the same students stopped failing every term.

Host: None of these teachers had different exams or new resources. They thought about exams as a process — before, during, after — and made small, practical improvements at each stage. The result: students who genuinely showed what they knew, and used their results to keep learning.