CASE STUDY: James Puffett, 14, is a year nine pupil at Greendown School. Exams can be a stressful time, but thankfully Greendown School offers a safety net.

The West Swindon secondary school is doing its best to ease the pressure on 14-year-old pupils taking their SATs by reassuring them that if they do endure a nightmare exam it will not be held against them.

Pupil James Puffett, 14, explains that if it all goes wrong than other methods of assessment will be taken into account, such as their teacher's assessment.

He said: "The school has done a lot to ease the pressure on us, because some people just panic in the exams. Most of us talked about how they went afterwards and it can be reassuring if other people found it as hard as you did.

"I felt the exams went okay but I did quite a lot of revision, about an hour or two a night, using revision books and BBC Bitesize."

James says despite the safety net a lot of pupils remained nervous.

"I think seven it a bit young to start doing SATs but 11 is okay, I don't remember much about them but my school, Brook Field made sure we were not too worried about them."