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Exams are Challenging!

Exams are challenging and can be very stressful. Reliably good Exam SKILLS are needed to PERFORM well in exams, meeting whatever challenges the exams present.

PERFORM‘s Exam Fit workshops are proven to build effective and reliable Exam SKILLS and the resilience to succeed with all exam demands.

Exam SKILLS can be learned, practiced, and improved to make them more effective and robust when the exams challenge you to get your targeted exam results.

With 35+ years experience of helping students through exams, our passion at PERFORM.ie is all about you and your success in preparing for and performing well in exams.

What can you expect of the Exam FIT Workshops?

The Exam FIT Workshop objective is always simple and practical – to build effective and robust skills key to success in exams. Each Exam FIT Workshop course takes place over five two-hour workshops,with time between workshops to practice and develop key Exam SKILLS..

The Exam FIT Workshops are aimed at Leaving Cert students who find exams challenging or who simply want to ensure that they do their best in exams.

Exam FIT workshops are not subject grinds. Exam FIT aims to equip exam takers with the necessary Exam SKILLS to prepare positively for exams and to perform more effectively and reliably well in the exam room.

Exam COACH Mission

Exam COACH works one-to-one with exam takers to develop personal exam skills that allow students to perform better and more consistently well in exams.

The key to performing well in exams is to identify, know, and address your strengths and weaknesses in approaching and managing yourself in exams.  Knowing your specific strengths and weaknesses – as evidenced by your own experience with past exams – is the first step and the best way to improve your exam management skills and achieve better and more consistent exam performance.

Under-performance in exams is very common and happens for a variety of reasons, even with the best students and with diligent study.  Yet everyone can improve the skills that matter with exams and use them when it comes to consistently delivering and performing in an exam room.

Exam COACH builds on 35 years of research and experience with exam systems in Ireland and internationally and with students preparing for exams at second-level education and for exams in Colleges and in the professions (e.g., accountancy, law).

One-to-One Attention

The Exam COACH philosophy is to work one-to-one with exam takers to improve their understanding of their own personal exam challenges and to develop and rebalance their Exam SKILL set.

Individual and Different

Every student is different and has an individual profile of Exam Skills and their own personal challenges with exams.  Exam COACH allows more individual attention to the specific personal challenges of students who find exams particularly challenging and stressful.

Community

An exam taker goes into an exam on his or her own, but does not need to miss the opportunity to learn and prepare with the help of available others.

Exam COACH Sessions

What can you expect of an Exam COACH sessions?  Well, its objective is always simple and practical – to work one-to-one with individual exam takers to build effective and robust skills key to success in exams.

Most students experience exam anxiety and some students struggle to deal with the demands that exam place on them.

Anyone experiencing anxiety over exams can benefit from assistance and support.

Students often repeat the same mistakes in exams leading to a pattern of poor performance and an unhelpful cycle of anxiety creation and maintenance.

Being aware of your strengths and weaknesses in an exam setting is key to being able to prepare better and to perform well in the exam room.

Many students need and can benefit from one-to-one coaching with their exam management understanding and their exam performance skills.

Why Exam COACH?

Focus on Your Exam SKILLS

Lots of exam takers have weak Exam SKILLS that they are unaware of yet can be strengthened, if identified and targeted with learning and practice.

All Students are Different

Individual Attention

Many students struggle to overcome their individual challenges within group and class settings and can benefit from one-to-one support

Resilience - A Personal Thing

Composure and the resilience it brings to PERFORMing in an exam is a very personal thing and sometimes requires individual attention to develop and settle.

All students take exams, but some students have better Exam Skills than others.  Knowing your Exam SKILLS strengths and weaknesses is critical to building confidence and composure.

What is Exam COACH?

Exam COACH provides one-to-one Exam SKILLS coaching to students who find exams particularly challenging and stressful.

Exam COACH sessions give individual attention to those who may benefit better from one-to-one coaching. Exam COACH aims to equip exam takers with the self-understanding and necessary Exam SKILLS to prepare for exams and to perform reliably well in the exam room.

Why Exam FIT?

Focus on Exam SKILLS

Lots of exam takers have weak Exam SKILLS that they are unaware of yet can be strengthened, if identified and targeted with learning and practice.

Practice Makes Perfect

Sports rely on ‘muscle memory’.  Exams rely on ‘learning memory’, believing confidently that you know your subject and that you can apply and rely on your learning in an exam.

Learning by Doing

Exam FIT is about DOING – learning how to DO exams better.  It is important to understand exams but critical to learn to be able to do exams.

Resilience - Ready and Able

Composure is an exam allows you to weather all problems, whether due to mistakes – common – or accidents – also common – or individual problems – also very common.

Action Learning

The acid test for KNOWING is DOING!  Learning by DOING is the best real-time preparation for good exam performance.

Workshops Not Classes

PERFORM does workshops not classes.  Our courses are about what you can do, not about what we can tell you to do.

Community

An exam taker goes into an exam on his or her own, but does not need to miss the opportunity to learn and prepare with the help of available others.

What is Exam FIT?

The courses are aimed at Leaving Cert and Junior Cert students and anyone taking college or professional exams who find exams challenging or who simply want to ensure that they do their best in exams.

Exam FIT courses are not subject grinds. Exam FIT aims to equip exam takers with the necessary Exam SKILLS to prepare positively for exams and to perform more reliably well in the exam room.

Profiling Your Exam SkillS

Every student has his or her own individual exam skill set profile.  Good exam performance requires knowledge of your exam skill set strengths and weaknesses.  And attention to ensuring that your skill set is as strong as possible and as reliable and resilient when exam time comes around.

Exam FIT Courses

Exam FIT courses build on 35 years of research and experience with exam systems in Ireland and internationally and with students preparing for exams at second-level education and for exams in Colleges and in the professions (e.g., accountancy, law).

Exam COACH Sessions

PERFORM’s proven practical coaching has been of assistance to many students over very many years, ensuring exam takers have strong Exam SKILLS to rely on at exam time,

PERFORM has worked with students taking the Junior and Leaving Certificate exams at second level and with students taking College exams and exams in the professions (e.g., accountancy, law).

Reassuring yourself that you can do it!

I Can EXAM √

Keys to Exam SUCCESS

Competence . . . knowing

Exams test knowledge and students are expected to prepare well for exams to allow their knowledge and competence to be assessed.

Confidence . . . Believing

Students need to know that they have prepared well, that they know their subject material, and that their reading of how well they know their material is accurate and realistic.

Composure . . . Delivering

The key to delivering in exams is to be able to remain composed no matter what questions are asked or what happens during the exam.

PERFORM
IN EXAMS

OUR PASSION

YOUR EXAM SUCCESS

Frequently asked questions

Traditionally exam performance is equated with achieving grades or results in exams.  An alternative perspective would be that exam performance is doing as well in exams as student are able.

However, with exams proving so challenging and with their results used for important and life determining purposes (e.g., college admissions, job selection), the pressure to ‘perform’ in exams remains one of the dominant and recurring themes in exam discussions.

Assessment broadly serve two purposes:  (i) formative – allowing the assessment of learning during the course and with the results serving as feedback to both students and teachers; and (ii) summative – allowing the assessment of achievement over a full course of study and at the end of the course, providing a ‘summary’ of learning as measured in specific ways.

Exams are stressful because they play a critical role in education and society.  While many would argue that the ‘formative’ value of exams and assessment is often understated or underplayed, the ‘summative’ value of exams focuses attention on the end results and the use of such results for purposes other than teaching in schools.  College admissions / course preference decision making and job selection are prime users of exam results.

Exam skills can be learned and can make a difference to how exam takers perform in exams.  Exam skills range across preparation beforehand to performance in the exam hall.

Exam anxiety and stress is a real experience for many students.  The psychology of performance suggests that a little anxiety is a good thing, but too much gets in the way of maintaining the ability to perform to one’s ability.

Most sports players are now exposed to sports psychology and its focus on facilitating better performance through understanding and managing anxiety and stress and its relationship with the process of performance.

So the answer is YES.  The exposure, experience, and reaction to exam anxiety and stress can be changed significantly and for the better, allowing students to perform to their ability.

Each and every year some 55,000 plus students take the leaving.  And another 55,000 plus students enter Fifth Year and the first of the two year Leaving Cert cycle. 

Very often, parents say that ‘we’re doing the Leaving’.  And in truth, they are right!

The Leaving Cert very often consumes not only the attention and energy of the student, it often dominates the family year.  

The Leaving Cert can create anxiety and stress for many parents.  While some parents might create additional pressure to perform, most parents simply want their sons and daughters to achieve what they are capable of.  But the pressure of exam results, CAO points, and seemingly life-influencing decisions can test the resolve and patience of even the most settled families.

Come January every year and perhaps more dependable that the seasons, exam season comes strongly into focus.  The holiday season is over and the run in to summer exams begins to focus students and families.

The late winter and early spring mornings will see articles in all forms of media, both here in Ireland and internationally.  Even the Financial Times gets involved and articles on exam pressures on students and families are regular features at that time of year.

Exams by their nature have many pitfalls and performance in exams is affected by factors such as ability, demeanour, study, preparation, and stress levels. 

Exam takers can make mistakes in preparing their subject material.  Misread exam questions are a common problem.  Providing incorrect or incomplete answers are also common issues.  Running out of time is a frequent experience for exam takers.  Question selection, time allocation, and mark ‘harvesting’ can affect performance and the results achieved in exams.

The history of education suggests that once exam results are being used to make important life decisions, the exam system will exert significant pressure on how education works and how it impacts on students.

The civil service entrance and promotion exam system in China two millenia ago was already a very refined exam system and historic accounts of its operation – as in ‘China’s Examination Hell’ – detail profound effects on students, families, and communities.  

So the challenges posed by exams are both international and somewhat timeless, in spite of on-going attention to reform how exams work and their role in the education system.

The Leaving Cert or Leaving Certificate to give it its full name is Ireland’s national exam taken at the end of second-level (secondary) education.  The Leaving Cert is a subject-based exam and now with an extensive number of subjects on offer.

The Leaving Cert is described as an ‘external’ ‘terminal’ examination.  The tag ‘external’ signifies that the exam is external to the school, with the Leaving Cert now being administered by the State Examination Commission.  The tag ‘terminal’ signifies that the exam occurs at the end of the Leaving Certificate course taken at school and it is designed to assess achievement across the entire syllabus set out for the subject in question.

Both the Leaving Cert and the Junior Certs are particular types of assessment.  Both exams are designed to assess learning across a defined syllabus typically taken over a perdiod of time in second-level education – three years for the Junior Cert and two years for the Leaving Cert. 

Leaving Cert results have a long history of use in decisions about third-level or college admissions in Ireland.  Our own research indicates that there were several progressions along the way to the current Points System that is tied to results in exams over six Leaving Cert subjects.  The Leaving Cert and the derived Points score (to a max of 600 plus possible bonus of 25, giving an actual max of 625) are widely regarded as the fairest benchmarks for decision-making in College admissions.

Our own published research has looked at the use of Leaving Cert results in college admissions and at the relative merits of the Leaving Cert versus other options favoured elsewhere (e.g., the Scholastic Aptitude Test – or SAT – in the US).

If you have any questions about exams, about the way they work, and about the challenges they present we would be only too happy to provide an answer.  Send your question via our Get in Touch section and we will look to respond by an appropriate FAQ posting as quickly as possible.