The Test Anxiety Performance Trap

You’ve heard the narrative, probably lived it: High-stakes exams roll around, you feel that pit in your stomach, the worry creeps in, and suddenly, your brain turns to mush. Conventional wisdom, and a good chunk of prior research, screams that test anxiety is a killer, a direct line to lower grades. It makes sense on the surface, right? You’re stressed, you can’t focus, you “go blank,” performance suffers. This idea, often called the ‘interference model,’ suggests anxiety itself actively messes with your ability to learn or recall information during tests. Case closed, or so you’d think.

A recent academic article from Jerrim (2023) cuts through that noise, taking a look at 15 and 16-year-olds in England facing the infamous, high-stakes GCSE exams. These aren’t just little quizzes; they’re grueling tests over many subjects, determining future paths. The researchers tapped into a serious dataset, linking the PISA 2015 survey results (including questions on test anxiety) to national GCSE outcomes. Importantly, the anxiety questions in PISA focused on the ‘worry’ side of things – fear of failure, getting poor grades, feeling anxious even when prepared, feeling tense studying – rather than just the physical jitters. They wanted to see how this anxiety related to actual grades, but critically, they planned to account for a major complicating factor: could it be that weaker students are just more anxious to begin with?

And this is where the story takes a turn. Forget the n-shaped curve where a little anxiety is good but too much is bad – this study finds little to no clear evidence of a strong relationship between test anxiety and GCSE performance. Seriously. When they controlled for factors like socio-economic status and, crucially, prior academic achievement (using scores from earlier tests like PISA or Key Stage 2), the link between how worried kids were about tests and the grades they actually got largely evaporated.

Think about that. The kids who reported being highly anxious about tests performed about the same on their GCSEs as kids with average levels of anxiety. And there was no real support for the idea that being very low in anxiety was also bad for performance (because you’re too relaxed) – those kids tended to do just fine, or even slightly better in some models before prior achievement was fully accounted for. This held true across different model setups and when looking at overall scores or specific subjects like math (or “maths” if you speak with a British accent). It also didn’t seem to vary much based on whether students were from lower or higher socio-economic backgrounds, or if they were previously high or low achievers. The single exception was a minor negative link for students who specifically agreed with the statement “I worry that I will get poor grades at school”. But overall? The big, scary test anxiety monster didn’t seem to bite into grades.

So, why the disconnect from the popular narrative and much of the prior research? This study’s findings lean heavily towards the ‘deficit model’. This model argues that the negative correlation seen in other studies isn’t because anxiety causes poor performance, but because students who are less academically able or less prepared are naturally more likely to feel anxious about upcoming tests. Once you properly account for that difference in prior ability, the anxiety itself doesn’t seem to add much independent power in predicting performance. This study, with its robust controls for prior achievement, provides evidence consistent with this idea. Other possibilities for the differing results include the specific way anxiety was measured (focusing only on ‘worry’ with fewer items than some other scales) or the unique, extremely high-stakes nature of the English GCSE system. It’s also possible that support systems or special accommodations already in place for anxious students might be helping to mitigate performance effects.

The real takeaway here isn’t that test anxiety isn’t real or important. It absolutely is, especially regarding the wellbeing and mental health of young people facing immense pressure. But this research suggests that, at least in the context of English GCSEs, the anxiety doesn’t seem to be the primary driver of performance differences once you factor in how capable students were to begin with. It doesn’t appear to be the performance trap many believe it is. The question then shifts from “How does anxiety lower grades?” to “Why are less prepared students more anxious?” and “What is the actual impact of this significant anxiety on young people’s mental health, regardless of their grades?”. That, it seems, is where the future focus needs to be.

Source

Jerrim, J. (2023). Test anxiety: Is it associated with performance in high-stakes examinations? Oxford Review of Education, 49(3), 321-341.