awareness of the weight academic success and grades carry in students’ minds, and how this stress is
significantly contributing to the 17 per cent of us dealing with a mental health disorder.
No matter how much teachers and parents encourage students, not much is going to change with these
fundamentally flawed attitudes and a system obsessed with grades, unable to value a whole person.
That is why I am trying to give young people a voice with a campaign called Could Do Better.
When we walk out of our school gates for the last time the scars don’t fade. Our mental health is only a
school’s problem for seven years but it is our problem forever.
Romy McCarthy is a student at North London Collegiate School