Too many exams make children ill

She believes that limiting exams and reducing the homework load would enable children to have a little more ‘down time’.

Sitting more than eight GCSEs can actually make school pupils ill, reports BBC News.

The new children’s commissioner Maggie Atkinson believes this new revelation could be related to the fact that society puts children under too much pressure to succeed.

Atikinson, who was formally the director of children’s services at Gateshead council believes that more creative experiences are the way forward. She has championed foreign exchanges, overseas visits and outings to theaters and art galleries and says that scrapping Sats tests for 11-year-olds should be considered.

In her first interview in her new post, Atkinson warned that many children were under so much pressure to achieve high results in exams that they lacked a healthy balance between work and normal life and were at risk of becoming ill from stress.

One in 10 young people had “anxieties or diagnosable mental health problems”, and worries about achieving at school could translate into eating disorders and self-harming.