24 April 2025, 13:18

By Jenny Anderson

When I moved to England over a decade ago with a three- and five-year-old in tow, I wandered into a stationery store and found an entire section of greeting cards dedicated to exams.

“Well done you!” they chirped. “Congrats on your GCSEs!” I laughed out loud. I’m American. We don’t do cards for midterms. At the time, I chalked it up to a quaint cultural quirk. We were only meant to be here for two years.

Twelve years later, I’ve just received my daughter’s GCSE schedule: 24 exams in six weeks, the culmination of three years of study. I’m now raising two girls in a system that couldn’t be more different from the one I grew up in—and writing about it, too.

Watching my daughters—and thousands of other young people—grapple with the often joyless pressure of modern schooling led me to research what motivates teenagers to learn. That research became my book: The Disengaged Teen.

We often say the UK and US are “two nations divided by a common language,” and education is no exception. In America, the pressure starts early and comes from all directions—grades, sports, test scores, extracurriculars—all building toward the Everest of college admissions.

In the UK, things are narrower but deeper: high-stakes national exams sort students at 16 (GCSEs) and again at 18 (A-levels), with each round shaping the academic and career path........

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