Pariksha Pe Charcha 2025: My Key Insights from CNBC Awaaz Panel on Exam Stress & Student Success
The stress of exams is a pressing concern for students, parents, and educators alike. As part of CNBC Awaaz’s panel discussion on Pariksha Pe Charcha, I had the opportunity to share insights on how we can transform the examination system to better support students while maintaining academic rigor. Exam stress management is essential for student success.
1. Shifting from Exam Pressure to Exam Readiness
One of the key takeaways from the discussion was the need to move away from the pressure-cooker model of exams. Many students experience heightened anxiety due to societal expectations, fear of failure, and an overemphasis on rote learning. To combat this, CBSE and other boards are gradually integrating competency-based learning, which emphasizes understanding over memorization.
2. Role of Parents & Teachers in Stress Management
Exams are not just an academic challenge but also a psychological one. Parents and teachers play a crucial role in creating a positive and motivating environment. Encouraging students to focus on consistent learning rather than last-minute cramming can help them approach exams with confidence rather than fear.
Key strategies include healthy study habits and time management, stress-management workshops and mentorship, and parents shifting focus from marks to overall learning and skill development.
3. Technology & AI in Exam Preparation
With the rapid advancement of AI-driven tools, personalized learning is now more accessible than ever. Platforms leveraging adaptive learning algorithms can help students identify weak areas and provide targeted practice. AI-powered tutors and revision tools can support exam preparation when students continue to verify information and remain responsible for their own learning.
4. CBSE & NEP 2020: A Step Towards Holistic Assessments
The National Education Policy 2020 has encouraged more application-based and skill-oriented assessment. Schools can support this direction through varied assessment strategies, projects, competency-based tasks and stronger continuous feedback.
5. The Importance of Mental Well-being
One of the biggest concerns highlighted was the impact of exams on students’ mental health. Schools must incorporate counselling, peer support and practical self-management strategies to help students cope with stress effectively.
Making Exams a Positive Learning Experience
Exams should be viewed as a learning checkpoint rather than a life-altering event. By focusing on skill-based learning, useful educational technology and an emotionally supportive environment, schools can help students become mentally and academically prepared.
How can schools reduce exam stress without lowering academic expectations?
Reducing exam stress does not mean making assessment meaningless. The better goal is to replace uncertainty and panic with readiness. Students cope better when expectations are clear, preparation is distributed over time, feedback arrives early enough to use, and adults communicate that an examination is important without treating it as a verdict on the child’s worth.
Build exam readiness before exam season
Schools can reduce avoidable pressure through predictable assessment calendars, regular low-stakes practice, revision guidance, opportunities to correct misconceptions, and mock or practice tasks that resemble the demands students will face. When preparation is part of the learning cycle, the final examination becomes less mysterious and last-minute cramming becomes less necessary.
What parents can change at home
Parents can help by replacing comparison with planning. Instead of repeatedly asking about marks, ask what the child is revising, what feels difficult and what support is useful. Protecting sleep, routine, meals, movement and quiet study time is often more helpful than adding another lecture about performance.
The leadership responsibility
Exam wellbeing is partly a student issue, but it is also a design issue. Assessment schedules, communication practices, teacher expectations and the school’s language around success all influence how students experience examination periods. Good leadership therefore treats readiness, rigour and wellbeing as connected responsibilities.
Looking back from 2026
The central concern remains familiar to every school leader: how do we preserve academic seriousness without allowing examinations to dominate a child’s sense of worth? Boards can reform question papers, schools can redesign assessment calendars and technology can personalise revision, but the emotional climate around examinations is still created largely by adults.
Exam stress is often a systems problem
Three tests in the same week, unclear syllabus communication, late changes, excessive homework, comparison of sections, public discussion of ranks and constant reminders that board examinations will decide the future can create anxiety even in a reasonably confident child. Leaders should ask what stress in the examination cycle is academically necessary and what stress is administratively created.
From pressure to preparedness
Preparedness is built through distributed practice. Students should encounter the type of thinking expected in the final examination throughout the year. Low-stakes quizzes, retrieval practice, application questions, timed writing, self-checking routines and structured revision help students develop familiarity.
Sleep, movement and food are academic strategies
A tired brain reads slowly, remembers poorly and regulates emotion less effectively. Schools should communicate clearly that adequate sleep, regular meals, hydration and movement are not distractions from academic preparation. They are part of preparation.
Teachers need an exam-season pedagogy
The weeks before major examinations require a shift in teaching. Teachers should help students identify high-priority concepts, connect topics, diagnose misconceptions and practise responding under realistic conditions. Revision should become increasingly student-led, with teachers acting as diagnosticians and coaches.
Marks matter, but they are not the whole learner
Marks matter for progression, admissions and opportunities, but they do not contain the whole person. A result is evidence from a particular set of tasks under particular conditions. It deserves attention, but it should not become an identity.
When stress becomes more than ordinary exam anxiety
Leaders and teachers should be alert to sustained sleep disruption, panic, withdrawal, hopelessness, severe changes in appetite, inability to function, persistent crying or statements suggesting self-harm. These situations require timely support and clear referral pathways.
AI can support revision, but students still need judgement
AI tools can generate practice questions, explain concepts at different levels, create revision schedules and provide immediate feedback. A useful routine is attempt first, ask for feedback second, verify third and then explain the idea in one’s own words.
What I continue to believe
Academic rigour and emotional wellbeing are not opposites. A student who is calm, prepared and supported is more capable of rigorous thinking than a student overwhelmed by fear. Our responsibility as educators is not to remove every challenge. It is to design challenge intelligently and ensure that children have the skills, relationships and perspective to meet it. Related reading includes the Student Learning hub, student motivation strategies, and holistic student profiles.