Oh boy.

I was particularly annoyed to hear of THIS story in the news.
It tells of how, across 150 schools in England, nervous students sat down to the first of the most important school exams they will ever face. These aren't mocks, nor are they pointless SATs, these are GCSEs, the results of which will decide the next few steps in their futures.

As they sat down to their exam, they were posed questions which referred to charts and graphs which were apparentley supposed to be in a source booklet accompanying the paper.
One flaw of this was that this source booklet was absent.
So cue copious amounts of 'quiet as you can' panicking as the time ticked along and thousands of students realised there was no way they could answer half of the questions in the paper. By the end of the alloted time, many were in tears.
Now this is a good start to the month of exams that await them. A real confidence booster if ever I saw it. AQA, who are in charge of this particular exam, said that students were not to worry as the fact they had no sources would be taken into consideration. Meaning what exactly? The markers will be a bit more leniant. It's unfair to mark them at all. It would also be unfair to make them resit it. This was a botch up of the exam board and no amount of formal apologies and assurances not to worry will make it right.
Their advice to relax and concentrateon the rest of their exams will be a harder feat to overcome thanh they make out. Imagine the impression these students will have on the exams after their experiences with their very first.
GCSEs are (pointlessly) terrifying enough as it is, without knocking students' confidence to this extent.