The beginning of the school year can be a stressful time for students, parents, and school staff. Students are adjusting to new teachers, classes, expectations, and routines while also returning to assignments and tests. Although some stress surrounding school and testing is common, for some students this stress can develop into test anxiety and create additional challenges throughout their school day.
What is Test Anxiety?
Test anxiety is a type of anxiety that occurs in situations where a student’s academic performance is being evaluated, such as during an exam or annual state test. Between 15% and 22% of students experience high levels of test anxiety at some point during their academic careers (Putwain & Daly, 2014). Test anxiety can develop for a variety of reasons. Some students may doubt their academic abilities, while others may be afraid of disappointing their parents or teachers or believe that failing a test will have severe consequences. Regardless of the cause, test anxiety can interfere with students’ motivation, engagement, and academic achievement.
What Does Test Anxiety Look Like?
Test anxiety is not easy to spot. Students experiencing high levels of anxiety might appear calm and not tell anyone how they are feeling. They have learned to mask their symptoms, or believe that the way they are feeling is normal. With this, it’s easy for students to become “silent underachievers” whose struggles go unnoticed. However, test anxiety presents itself as persistent worries about upcoming tests, physiological anxiety symptoms, like an upset stomach or racing heart, feelings of hopelessness, or even procrastination.
Unfortunately, these symptoms can severely interfere with students’ motivation, engagement, and overall academic achievement. Test anxiety can also be influenced by the student’s surrounding environment. Toxic classroom culture, competitive peers, unfamiliar testing environments, struggles with content, and much more can increase anxiety. Additionally, parents can unintentionally contribute to this by focusing heavily on letter grades and percentages, rather than seeing and applauding students’ efforts.
Supporting Test Anxiety at School
Schools play an important role in helping students understand and recognize test anxiety early. With some help, schools can reduce stress surrounding testing. School Psychologists recommend the following:
Teach students about stress. Help students understand that stress is not necessarily good or bad and teach them to recognize physical and behavioral signs of anxiety, such as a racing heartbeat, sweaty hands, fidgeting, procrastinating, or going blank during a test.
Promote emotional well-being and resilience. Schools can teach strategies such as relaxation and deep breathing while using targeted praise and encouragement to build students’ confidence.
Identify test anxiety early. Parents and teachers should look for potential triggers such as perfectionism, previous poor test performance, negative self-talk, unrealistic peer comparisons, and underdeveloped test or study skills.
Reduce situational triggers. Making testing environments more familiar can reduce some of the anxiety surrounding high-stakes tests. Students with strong anxiety reactions may also benefit from testing in a smaller environment with a familiar staff member present.
Be mindful of how adults talk about tests. Focusing on what students have already learned, strategies they can use, and previous successes may be more helpful than repeatedly emphasizing the importance of a test or consequences of poor performance.
Supporting Students At Home
Parents and school staff should be working together to help support students with test anxiety. Recommendations for support at home include the following:
Create a study schedule. Help students spread their studying over time with frequent opportunities to review rather than relying on cramming right before a test.
Encourage practice. Practicing important information until it becomes more automatic can make recall easier and allow students to focus more of their attention on answering questions during the test.
Give students enough time to prepare. Depending on the test, students may need hours or days to learn the material and practice their test-taking skills.
Recognize effort and progress. Use positive and specific encouragement throughout the preparation process rather than focusing only on the final test grade.
Reduce pressure surrounding test outcomes. Placing too much importance on grades or emphasizing how a test may affect a student’s future can increase anxiety. Instead, parents can remind students of material they already know and previous successes.
Focus on growth after the test. If a student receives a disappointing result, discuss areas for growth, goals for future tests, and what they can do differently next time rather than focusing on perceived weaknesses.
Starting the School Year
As students start the school year, parents and school staff need to pay attention to how they are responding to tests and other academic expectations. Test anxiety is not always obvious, but avoidance of school work, negative self-talk, and changes in test performance can be signs that students need additional support. Having professionals by their side during this process, encourages them to understand that they do not need to manage test anxiety alone.
