Didi Hand believes that the British examination system is “intellectual warfare” carried out against teenagers. She has survived to tell the tale.

Asking a student for their views on exams is similar to requesting a turkey's opinion of Christmas: given the option, neither would vote for it. Yet the whole thing seems to unfold such with a tedious sense of inevitability that neither fowl nor pupil really put up much resistance, since the end of exams seems as unlikely as the emancipation of poultry.

Despite much evidence of counter-productivity, British youth find the tranquillity of their teenage lives somewhat rudely interrupted by the arrival of the government approved Axis of standardised evil.

The invading army of exams, led by Field Marshal Edexcel and bolstered by the notably ferocious Corporal AQA, are so intent on their mission to critique the academic capacity of English adolescents that they seem almost oblivious to the fact that, as far as the majority of secondary school pupils are concerned, intellectual warfare has been declared upon them.

This war lasts approximately four years for each candidate and, with little sign of peace talks and an ever increasing number of recruits, shows little indication of drawing to a close. Induction comes in the form of the battle for the marshes of GCSE, followed inevitably by skirmishes on the AS field, the casualties of which are carried over to the neighbouring hospital of January re-sits. Finally, in the last year comes the showdown, the culmination of three years of fighting: the siege of A-level town. Commencing around late April, revision guides are handed out for academic insulation and trenches are dug behind desks and laptops. Copious amounts of caffeine are ingested to keep protagonists conscious and enable revision for as many hours as humanly feasible. Combatants are often seasoned with a sprinkling of ProPlus when preparing to ambush a particularly fortified question, the answer to which may be well guarded.

I emerged from my own personal battle, shell-shocked and exhausted, as did all of my friends. We congregated to discuss our ordeal, engulfed in gratitude that the war was over, though we would not find out for some months whether we had been victorious. During all this time the efforts of the home front, or in other words parents, innocently caught up in the brawl, must not be forgotten. In fact, their achievements must be celebrated. For residing in a china house with only a stressed-out bull muttering algebraic formulae for the final two months of the pedagogic year is no easy task.

Certainly a good education is the most valuable gift a parent can pass on to their children, casting aside fiscal inheritance (though the odd country estate wouldn't go amiss). Though I hate to admit it, a set of semi-decent A levels allows children to provide for themselves long after their parents have ceased to do so.

I do not argue with the need to measure learning, to differentiate between the mediocre and the budding Einstein. My quarrel rather is with the manner in which it is conducted, the stress placed upon the individual pupil and, by default, parents, teachers, siblings and friends.

The older generation clamour that proper exams are heading for extinction. If they refer to the draconian inkwell and parchment breed of exam, then indeed the rise of the multiple-choice question and introduction of internet exams in Scotland would confirm this.

Having never sat a traditional O level I feel ill-qualified to compare it to its respective alphabetical counterpart. Perhaps exams are being dumbed down; history A level does undeniably appear to be sponsored by Hitler and Henry VIII, and French GCSE seems very much to favour those with a semi-bilingual expert knowledge of camping vocabulary. But this by no means makes them any easier.

Exams are unfortunate and upsetting, a bloody battlefield of elevated stress levels for all involved, yet they are also inevitable and, to an extent, indispensable.

At the beginning of this school year, I would advise all teenagers: sharp pencils for maximum legibility, a smart uniform to aid aesthetics, sound revision battle tactics and a lot of luck and patience in the looming battle for exam brilliance.