Educational Assessment System Reform

Josh Dean Excerpts

Wednesday 15th October 2025 Westminster Hall

[Josh Dean (Hertford and Stortford) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered reforming the educational assessment system.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Lewell. Over the summer, another cohort of young people finished their exams, marking the end of a period that left many feeling overwhelmed, anxious or uncertain about the future. Young people are growing up at the sharp end of so many challenges. We can see that reflected in recent figures from NHS England: one in four young people are struggling with their mental health, and the number of 16 to 24-year-olds with a common mental health condition is up by more than a third in a decade.

We face an unprecedented a youth mental health crisis. I am proud to sit behind a Labour Government that recognise the scale of the challenge. Almost 1 million more pupils will have access to school-based mental health support this year, and 6,700 additional mental health workers have been recruited since last July. But we cannot ignore the impact that the exam system is having on children and young people’s mental health. We must go further.

Paddy, a YoungMinds activist, gave a striking account of his A-level experience. He said that:

“From the start of Year 13,1 found it difficult to think about anything other than exams. At school, I would hardly eat anything, as I was so focussed on studying. The exams massively heightened my OCD. It seemed to know these exams were incredibly important to me, and it went on the attack. The peak was the night before one exam, when I had a complete breakdown and could not stop crying. The pressure was enormous, and I felt like I was drowning in the sea of pressure. Two years after finishing my exams, I still have nightmares about them, imagining I’m back in the exam hall.”

Paddy’s experience is not an isolated example. Research from the YoungMinds Missing the Mark campaign reveals the profound impact that exams are having on children and young people. Over 60% of GCSE and A-level students struggled to cope during exam season, with many experiencing panic attacks, or even suicidal thoughts and self-harm, and taking time off school. At just 11 years old, year 6 pupils said that their SATS made them question their abilities for the first time in their lives, losing confidence and missing out on sleep as a result.

Let me be clear: I am not making an anti-exams argument. Exams help to level the playing field, and there will always be a place for them. But there is a clear imbalance in the system. Young people are simply sitting too many exams in a concentrated timeframe that puts unacceptable pressure on pupils and teachers alike. Reforms to GCSEs over the last decade have led to an eight-hour increase in exam time, with end-of-course exams nearly all taken over a period of six weeks in a single summer term. Sixteen-year-olds in England spend approximately 31.5 hours sitting their GCSE exams. Compare that to Victoria in Australia, where students in low secondary sit around four hours of centralised exams; in Alberta in Canada it is 10 hours, in Poland it is 12, and in the Republic of Ireland it is 16.

I argue that we are now seeing the fallout of those changes: a much less flexible system that is contributing to a deepening mental health crisis. Eight in 10 education leaders surveyed by the Association of School and College Leaders said that reformed GCSEs had created greater levels of stress and anxiety among their students.

The current system is not just damaging to wellbeing; it is failing to effectively assess the skills that young people need today. A focus on memory recall is pushing educators to teach to the test, covering content at pace at the expense of developing a depth of understanding.

[Alistair Strathern (Hitchin) (Lab)]

I thank my hon. Friend for the way in which he has tirelessly championed young people and their mental health since entering Parliament. Over the summer I held a number of workshops with young people and families with special educational needs, as well as schools, to understand their concerns about the ways the current system is failing young people. If the Government are to succeed in their worthy ambition of delivering more inclusive mainstream education—which we know is in every young person’s best interest, if we can deliver it well—would he agree that it is vital that we get our reforms to assessment right, and speak to it in an integrated way, to ensure that every young person can be set up to succeed and thrive at school?

[Josh Dean]

I could not agree more with the point my hon. Friend makes. I held a number of roundtables with parents and carers in my constituency over the summer as well. We were discussing the SEN challenges we face in Hertfordshire. At every session I held, parents and carers talked about the inflexibility of the system. Getting the reforms right to ensure that the system provides that flexibility and caters for all students could not be more important.

My hon. Friend is right to highlight that, because everything we have talked about so far disproportionately impacts the most disadvantaged. Schools in the most deprived areas spend more time preparing for SATs; 76% of children with SEND do not reach the expected standards at the end of year 6, which rises to 91% of pupils with an education, health and care plan. Students with a history of poor mental health are at particular risk, which is even more acute for care-experienced young people, given the prevalence of mental health conditions in that group. Young people deserve a fairer, more balanced approach to assessment, where wellbeing and academic success are not at odds with one another.

[Helen Hayes (Dulwich and West Norwood) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this important debate and on his speech. Does he agree that it is an unacceptable feature of our education system that around a third of young people leave school without a recognised qualification, a grade 4 in English or maths? For many of those young people, the way that the system treats resits traps them in a cycle of demoralising continuous failure, just at the point when they should be discovering their passion—the thing they are good at—and should be preparing to get new qualifications and succeed in life? Does he agree that we need urgent work to stop that cycle of failure both upstream in schools and in post-16 education?

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[Josh Dean]

Again, I could not agree more. Being trapped in that cycle of failure leaves a mark on young people. We want young people to leave school ready for work and life, and to thrive with confidence. A system that grinds them down cannot be correct. I could not agree more on the point of post-16. I have had a number of conversations about that over recent weeks. That is an area that desperately needs reform, so that we get our young people ready to thrive in life.

The independent curriculum and assessment review offers a vital opportunity to tackle that injustice and one of the upstream drivers of the youth mental health crisis, and build a system fit for the 21st century. No 11-year-old child should feel bad about themselves because of exams. SATs are used to rank the performance of schools; they are not supporting children’s learning.

Timed tests over four days in year 6 are neither a reliable way to capture a pupil’s knowledge and abilities, nor a way to monitor school standards. Assessment should support a pupil’s learning and be clearly separated from school performance metrics, because placing the burden of accountability on children at such a formative age cannot be right.

[Sam Carling (North West Cambridgeshire) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is giving a powerful account of the inadequacy of SATs. Does he agree that the fact that so many secondary schools retest their pupils when they arrive shows that they do not have trust in SATs either?

[Josh Dean]

I cannot remember the numbers off the top of my head, but my hon. Friend is right to highlight the number of secondary schools that retest students because of the lack of reliance and belief that SATs accurately measure their ability. We urgently need to rethink our approach to assessment at the primary level, and all options should be on the table. I would be grateful if the Minister could address the concern around SATs in her response, and confirm the Department’s commitment to addressing them when the curriculum and assessment review concludes.

We need to rebalance the system, reducing the dominance of high-stakes, end-of-course exams for GCSE and A-level students. A diversification of assessment methods could reduce pressure on young people, allowing them to showcase a broader range of strengths and better prepare them for life after school. I would be grateful if the Minister could confirm whether the Department would implement such an approach, should it be recommended in the independent curriculum and assessment review’s final report.

Moving away from reliance on traditional exams and reducing the volume of exams that young people sit does not mean sacrificing rigour, as set out in Cambridge OCR’s “Striking the balance” report. It concluded that the overall volume of exams can be reduced without impacting the reliability of grades, and that greater consideration should be given to non-exam assessments. A well-designed, modular, multimodal system could be equally robust and offer fairer, more balanced ways to measure achievement. Universities across the country already do that to great effect and could offer a model to learn from for our school system.

More widely, a whole-school approach is essential to supporting children and young people’s mental health. An assessment system that balances wellbeing and academic success would be complemented by a curriculum, teaching and learning approach that promotes resilience and supports social and emotional learning. Will the Minister confirm that wellbeing will be a central focus in the Department’s approach when it comes to implementing the findings of the independent curriculum and assessment review and more generally?

I am under no illusions that reform of the assessment system is a silver bullet to resolve the youth mental health crisis. Young people sit at the intersection of many complicated challenges, and this must be part of a wider piece of work to support them. I recognise that it will take time and will need to be phased in, to avoid overwhelming the education system, in consultation with our educators. But children and young people are experts in their experiences. When they tell us something is wrong, it is our responsibility in this House to listen and act accordingly, not decide that we know better.

The last major reform of the assessment system took place a decade ago. We cannot miss this opportunity to get it right for young people. They need us to embrace ambitious reform now, not in another 10 years, to help tackle the youth mental health crisis and deliver a lasting assessment system that supports their wellbeing and their academic success and better prepares them for work and life.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

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[Saqib Bhatti]

I do not agree with the hon. Lady. Students need assessment and examinations so they can measure up not just within England but against the international landscape that we operate in. By the way, I am sure that she was an excellent teacher who encouraged and nurtured the curiosity in her children, just as my chemistry teacher and my physics teacher did, but we should be clear about what is at stake here and what is at risk if there are changes to the educational system that we reformed, built and created.

Let me make some progress, and I hope that I can answer the question from the hon. Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole (Vikki Slade). The students who would lose out are the very ones the Government claim they want to protect—the very students in our education system we should all strive to empower. There is no denying that exams can be stressful, as we have all acknowledged. Students want to do well, and they are setting themselves up for future study and careers, so it is no surprise that they feel some pressure—a lot of pressure, even—during exam season.

As my right hon. Friend the Member for East Hampshire (Damian Hinds) said, exams are by their very nature stressful. As a father, it is true that I want to protect my children from every stress and injury, but I also know that they need to go through that process to learn the resilience that they will need to go through life.

[Josh Dean]

The hon. Gentleman has talked a lot about stress. I acknowledge the point about resilience, which is why we need that in the curriculum, but would he equate stress to panic attacks, suicidal thoughts and self-harm? I would say that those are two very different things, and that desperately needs to be addressed in the system.

[Saqib Bhatti]

I will address that question in one second. As the interim report said, students relish the chance to demonstrate their knowledge and capabilities, despite the stress of exams. I was moved by the hon. Gentleman’s speech. He talks about panic attacks, and other people have talked about mental health and wellbeing, so let me be clear: if those things are observed and not accommodated by the current system, Opposition Members will happily look at suggestions and work on a cross-party basis, if we believe that that will improve the system while also protecting our children.

If the Government really want to tackle the challenges affecting student mental health on a day-to-day basis, we have been clear: this is not just about exam season, and we think that banning phones from schools would do far more to relieve many of the social pressures that face young people, and allow them to focus on their educational needs instead. I welcome support from the Government Benches for a proven mechanism that clearly leads to addressing students’ mental health. After speaking to teachers and other stakeholders we are clear about the positive impact that banning mobile phones would have on mental health—[Interruption.] I am happy to take a positive intervention on that.

It is deeply disappointing, if unfortunately not too surprising, that this seems to be the direction that the Government are taking with our education system, given the appalling record of their colleagues in the Welsh Government on education. Even the most disadvantaged children in England achieve better educational outcomes than the average student in Wales, thanks to the Welsh Government choosing ideology over evidence, and it is the students who suffer in the long term.