Ten and 11-year-old children are skipping meals to fit in extra study time for their SATs exams, according to new research by Manchester based Kellogg’s
.A poll of 1,000 pupils who took their Key Stage Two SATs last year found that a fifth (21%) had skipped breakfast in favour of extra preparation time.
Some 21 per cent said they’d stayed up late to revise and had even lost sleep worrying over the tests, which take place across England this week.
When polled, 17 per cent said they couldn’t eat due to nerves, and a further 17 per cent said they felt hungry before exams due to skipping meals. Given that 579,000 were eligible for SATs last year, that means more than 96,000 pupils could have gone into their exams feeling hungry.**
One in eight children didn’t eat most mornings of SATs week, with girls almost twice as likely as boys to abandon breakfast.
Those children who did eat often failed to have an appropriate breakfast. Some 58 children in the 1000 said they had an energy drink such as Red Bull or Monster – up from 30 in last year’s survey.
Thirty-three admitted drinking coffee, 41 said they had chocolate or sweets, and 16 (up from eight in 2014) 10 to 11-year-olds said they’d smoked cigarettes before exams.
Most children, however, chose a sensible breakfast, with cereal and toast the most popular choices.
More than half of the children surveyed (57 per cent) said teachers had told them SATs were important for the primary school league tables.
In a separate survey of 1,000 parents of children who took their SATs last year,31 per cent said their child was too nervous to eat before their SATs exams. Almost half (45%) worried that their child wasn’t getting the right level of teaching to achieve good SATs grades, and of those most (54%) said it was down to teachers being under so much pressure that their teaching was unavoidably affected.
Some 44 per cent considered getting their child extra tutoring. The top reasons for wanting added help were to improve their child’s future prospects (57% listed this as a reason), and to get their child into better sets at secondary school (38%).
Some 17 per cent of children said they felt most pressured by their parents, second only to their teacher (29%) and ahead of their headteacher (6.8%).
Child psychologist Dr Amanda Gummer said: “It’s a worrying trend that children are feeling pressured at such a young age to the extent that it affects their sleep and diet. The paradox is that these children are actually reducing their chances of success, as sleep and nutrition play a large part in a child’s ability to cope with challenges faced during the day.
“Parents need to help children feel valued for who they are and the effort they put in and reduce the anxiety around exams. Parents can help their children develop positive exam strategies that help them thrive in the long term and set them up for lifelong learning rather than cramming for any one test.”
John Coe of the National Association for Primary Education said: “Having breakfast with friends at a breakfast club can help children to calm any nerves they might have before sitting their exams.
“A decent breakfast is – in itself – a great way of preparing for the tests.”
