Test Anxiety among Board Exam Writing Students

The quality and quantity of knowledge acquired by school students in Tamil Nadu is assessed primarily through written exams. This evaluative nature of the exam may lead to severe level of test anxiety which may ultimately result in attempting suicide. The main objective of this study is to measure and compare test anxiety among government school students & government-aided school students during SSLC board exams. The sample comprises of 60 students, 30 from government schools and 30 from government-aided schools on Madurai population those writing SSLC exam and their age level between 14-15 years. Westside Test Anxiety Scale (WTAS) was used for the evaluation and data collection was done by purposive sampling method, the independent t-test was used to analyse. The result shows that there is a significant difference between government school students and government-aided school students. The government school students have higher level test anxiety than government-aided school students because in government schools the students may affect by some factors such as lack of proper preparations, low self-esteem, lethargic nature of some teachers and family situations. Therefore, certain effective measures should be taken to diminish the factors associated with test anxiety for instance non judgmental attitude towards the students based on the mark or background and improving skill based education and evaluation rather than making evaluations only based on public exam scores. Further research can be done on gender difference in test anxiety and its effects during recruitment process.