Tragedy as schoolboy, 17, takes his own life after falsely thinking he had failed his maths GCSE

I really sympathise with the family (particularly as someone who has been frequently suicidal themselves) but something really irks me when these articles are published and the parents describe the children as “happy”. I know they might have appeared that way to any observer, but to describe them that way after the fact just seems so illogical and unhelpful that I don’t think it serves the parents or anyone who feels similar to their poor son.

Brutally sad. We as a society put too much pressure and emphasis on grades for young people when in reality grades don’t matter beyond unlocking the ability to attend a certain school you may wish to get into.

You can often always retake or spend a bit of time to learn something you find hard. It shouldn’t be stigmatized to retake a module or a course after failing.

Over 40% of students fail certain programming modules we teach, and it’s normal. The students need extra time to rise to the level of challenge and we maintain high standards. Most pass the second time around and it’s not an issue for their long term success.

After reading the article, I highly doubt that he killed himself because he failed one subject (which he’d just retake in any case) or because he had a presentation. Just sounds like a poor kid who struggled with a lot of things.

Shit system with shit results.

We really need to move away from a system where someones path in life is determined by their performance in a 2 week period when they are 16.

I don’t know how it is now but when I was in school they did make it seem like not getting A-C in maths, english and Science was the end of your existence.

I failed maths and have since gone on to have an incredible and well paid career in IT.

Poor kid man

Allied to the pressure put on kids from a young age over exam results (I don’t remember any examinations whatsoever until 12 and that was purely to work out sets for maths/english). You have also got a world that has gotten so shit that even those with a good degree from a decent uni are facing a scramble to get barely above minimum wage jobs, little chance of getting on the property market, saddled with huge student debts and so on. When the ‘prize’ for doing it all by the book and doing well academically is so shit, you can see why there’s a sense that even one bad GCSE result will be catastrophic.

Too much pressure is put on kids with exams. It shouldn’t be seen as a cliff edge situation. It should be seen in a position of a learning environment not there to catch you out.

One of my sons is doing GCSEs this year. This is a big reminder to me to tell him whatever happens with them, it is OK. They’re just GCSEs.

I failed my maths GCSE and they did make it seem like the end of the world. The pressure the modern educational system places on exams for people who don’t excel at this stuff is unreal.

Now I’m a lead software engineer and doing pretty well.

Poor kid. RIP.

Teachers In my experience go on like uni is life or death yet I never went to 6th form and now make more than a teachers salary its just a load of unnecessary pressure imo. Never once after leaving did my gcse get looked at once.

Haven’t read the article, assuming he failed his English also?

I have never emphasized more with someone.

As someone who also has both ADHD, autism and is also suicidal all I can say is life is screwed over for people with conditions like these, way more then anyone realises and blaming his parents won’t help.

I don’t know this guy but if his experiences were anything like mine he was failed by everyone and not just his parents or the NHS or the education system.

So sad , too much pressure on exam results , I have and continue to tell my kids do your best but the result doesn’t matter , if it’s good then great if its bad it’s fine its not the end of the world.

The sheer volume of stress I had over my exams. I have ADHD to a rather extreme level (did not know it at the time) so studying was a brutally difficult experience. Even if I could manage to sit down and start studying, trying to get the information into my head and stay there required so much mental effort that I would spend hours trying to study, maybe only 20% actually sticking, on a good day and I would beat myself up over it.

Didn’t help that people around me, including my teachers and parents kept telling me that I needed to apply myself more or not be so lazy. I Ended up doing a lot better than I expected but I do remember my mother saying to me after showing her my results, results that were really good and got me into my college, “you could have done so much better if you actually studied.” Which was just a shitty thing to say to someone who tried really hard and actually did well.

Now I have an official AuDHD-Combined diagnosis 13 years later and the medication and treatments have changed my life. But looking back, for those final two years of school I was miserable. The insane amount of pressure and my genuine struggles with studying being dismissed and forcing myself into hours of studying a night without the actual problem being addressed broke me.

Looking back now, all that pressure and constant putting down and dismissal of what I know now is a genuine nuerodevelopmental disorder destroyed me. Mentally, emotionally and physically. I was wildly depressed, anxious 24/7, constantly putting myself down, not sleeping right, feeling like a failure, that I had no future, etc.

I even developed multiple eating disorders from stress and the bad self image I was building of myself in this time. And those eating disorders were bad. My weight went to extremes in both ways. And when it was done, that was it. I got into college and those results were never important again. And now I am just pissed off over it. All that stress, pressure, hard work that pretty much destroyed me and it never really mattered after school.

I’ve been fairly close to this scenario.

Was bullied fairly relentlessly at school, I hid and put all my efforts into trying to stay out of the other kid’s line of fire. My grades suffered massively as a result and teachers could never make the connection between my behaviour and my grades.

My parents never knew, as I had issues explaining my school situation to them, so I would typically wallpaper everything as fine. They would be furious at me for having bad grades, despite knowing I was cleverer than my results often showed. They never really knew about the bullying either. I was even shortlisted for some special classes, despite lacking the prerequesite learning difficulties.

When a student is repeatedly told that GSCE’s and their results are the academic foundation you will build *your entire life on,* it hangs very heavy in the air when test-season comes up, and the anxiety it brings out in children is overwhelming. In the mind of my teenage self, if I fail these tests, what is the point of continuing further? Why carry on if I failed at the first hurdle?

It’s frankly harrowing, and I pray my kid never has to deal with what I dealt with. The maelstrom of social and academic pressures can do invisible damage to kids you might see as well-adjusted.

I almost attempted after my GCSE’s for this sane reason. The pressure was so immense I felt as if failing my maths was the end. So much pressure from teachers adding up every day with the prospect of me never getting over a certain grade because of the paper I was on, I ended up coming close.

There’s no safe guarding when it comes to exams which I find strange. Kids should be enjoying their youth without too much pressure on exams that don’t even really mean much. There’s people out there with A stars who are in minimum wage jobs and people who failed being extremely skilled tradesmen. There’s no nurture for these kids to feel like they mean something and have a purpose in life.