The ultimate goal of education and how we define success are intrinsically linked, writes Cory Lowde.
It is a fairly straightforward exercise ? measuring exam results ? and presents us with ordered league tables and ways of labelling both schools and children. This allows us to make easy conclusions as to which schools and children are successful and which are not.

Stats and Facts
However, the cost to our young people, and as a result to society, of defining success in this way can be high. Latest data taken from the Mental Health Foundation in the UK reveals that 20% of adolescents will experience a mental health problem in any given year. 50% of mental health problems are established by age 14.
There will of course be different reasons for the upsurge in stress and depression. The isolation resultant from technology, the pressure of competition, and other factors all play their part. This is why it is most harmful to create an education system that exacerbates this trend by defining educational success in terms of the highest grades alone and then to create a national curriculum that examines children to excess even at primary school.
What we want for our children is that they should be happy, in the sense of personal fulfilment through positive engagement with the world. 

Exam Pressure
We allow ourselves to accept that this examination pressure is inevitable and somehow a part of growing up, despite the secret truth we all know: that what is most important, is ...