WHEN I look back at my youth, exams were few and far between. Bar spelling and multiplication tests, I can’t recall having exams at primary school.

Secondary school wasn’t blighted by exams until fifth year – that’s year 11 to anyone under 30 – when we sat mock O-levels, followed by the real thing.

Then we had almost two years when we could really let our hair down and enjoy the relative freedoms of being in the Sixth Form without the looming spectre of exams.

Now, it seems, not a year goes by without them. From primary school upwards, children are sitting tests. I remember my daughters, at an age when they still wore princess dresses to school on dressing up day, having to do all sorts of preparation for SATs exams.

When they came to sit these tests, I was horrified to see rows of desks set out in the hall in an intimidating way. I realise that children need to be prepared for what will be a lifetime of exams – but so early in life?

It seems like an endless cycle of revision, stress and anxiety, with barely any time to sit back and enjoy learning.

Last year at this time, my daughters were revising for A-levels and GCSEs respectively. Twelve months on, here we are again, with one swotting for AS levels – something we didn’t when I was young, but upon which universities seem to put great store – and one away at university, preparing for the culmination of what I can only describe as a deluge of first year exams.

When I was a student I don’t remember any exams other than my finals. In fact I had a job. which consumed at least half my week, and I had no trouble at all fitting it in. Without the constant need to swot, I enjoyed myself.

National tests now begin at age seven, and in September tests for four-year-olds are to be introduced. What sort of questions can a four-year-old expect?

No wonder children are anxious – exam stress has led to a 200 per cent increase in phone calls to the charity Childline about exams in recent weeks, with more than 87,500 visits to their website about the issue.

On the plus side, if the government introduce any more tests, exam nerves could become a thing of the past. Pupils will become so blasé about exams that they will saunter into the hall without a care in the world.