A Deputy Head reflects on a rewiring approach to assessment week that places students’ wellbeing at its heart.

In school, we have reimagined our traditional assessment week by placing student wellbeing at the centre.

Now in its second year, this refreshed approach is more streamlined, more thoughtful, and most importantly, less stressful. Our aim was to reduce the pressure of high stakes testing while still developing essential academic habits; facilitating effective revision, managing consecutive assessments, maintaining focus despite summer distractions, and building exam stamina. These are important skills, especially in a system where significant exams begin at age 16.

The changes have created a noticeably calmer and more uplifting end of the year experience for our Year 7 students.

What did these changes look like in school?

Each day began with a tutor check-in, followed by the Pomodoro method of revision (when students choose a topic, focus for 25 minutes, take a five minute break, and repeat the cycle, with one longer break after four sessions). This breaks revision into manageable chunks, boosts motivation, and builds the stamina needed for sustained study.

Year 7 assessments were all scheduled in the morning; reducing anticipation and helping students stay focused. Students with access arrangements had dedicated exam spaces, and everyone prepared for their assessments in English, Maths, Sciences, Latin, and Languages with each lasting approximately 60 minutes.

Following the morning assessments, the day transitioned into a restorative programme of wellbeing activities. Led by our Head of Wellbeing, students chose from a host of experiences such as yoga, origami, gratitude journalling, and curating personal playlists.

We know, from GSA research, that girls in girls’ schools play the most sport. Sporting activity was kept as a priority; with energising, friendly, rounders matches hosted off-site, and vital Games lessons were carried on, to provide a much needed opportunity for our young women to keep strong and to refresh and reinvigorate themselves, physically.

Honing the students’ academic and personal skills further, metacognition and study skills workshops led by our SENDCo focused on cognitive science such as retrieval practice, effective spacing, interleaving, and the importance of sleep.

With a whole school approach, the Humanities team, boldly, replaced timed essays with a dynamic, interdisciplinary, board game project: ‘Race Across Greenwich!’ Working in teams, students were tasked with designing a board game to showcase the historical, geographical, and religious dimensions of our borough. Comprising key locations, game format, and game rules it provided an ideal opportunity for students to exercise their critical thinking, collaboration, and creativity. It is a brilliant example of how assessment can be both rigorous, and joyful. The benefits of the week undoubtedly outweighed the challenges.

For other schools that plan a similar approach, we have learnt that our model required a whole school collaboration; school colleagues need to be available to actively deliver workshops; sessions need to be well-prepared and thoughtfully resourced (booking external speakers needs forward planning); finding the rooms and space can be a challenge (we often split the Year 7 cohort into smaller groups to encourage greater participation and engagement); gathering feedback from both students and colleagues is invaluable, and is helping us to refine and improve the experience for the future.

It’s striking how, with a creative approach and a willingness to do things differently, the exam experience can be transformed into a more positive experience for students. Our girls already understand the mechanics of exams, having navigated the 11+, so it feels entirely appropriate to approach Year 7 with greater care and intention. We’ve found that ‘just enough’ assessment helps build effective study habits without the need for back-to-back exams, at such an early stage. I’m proud of the meaningful changes we’ve made, and I hope more schools feel inspired to take similar steps.


Kristina Lewis
Deputy Head (Academic) at Blackheath High School, GDST