Sharanpreet Padda
Raised in a classroom-centred household as the daughter of a teacher, education has always played a central role in Sharanpreet’s life. With her academic excellence, she experienced the opportunities and pressures that academic environments can create. These experiences shaped her understanding of how student mental health is overlooked, at the cost of learning being stimulating, challenging and inspiring. Sharanpreet aims to advocate for student voices and solutions that preserve the value of a quality education.
“I am driven by my own mental health struggles, faced in the pursuit of academic excellence. Having recently finished school and having been accepted into the University of Oxford, I decided to take a year out of academia, and currently work as a volunteer reading coach for Read Easy UK, a charity that supports adults who are learning how to read later in life. Working with this charity taught me how easily people are left behind in the current education system and how exam results are prioritised over progress and learning.
My personal experiences have inspired me to use my academic background in humanities to reach an international audience through writing. This is my first journalistic piece and I hope to continue to bring my love of writing and creativity into future advocacy work.
The outdated pedagogy of English schools and the passive attitude towards change in the education system inspired this closer look into exams, which prioritises the student perspective and explores why greater change is needed. Throughout my interviews, I realised how research can only take you so far. Only by connecting with those affected by the issues can you gain a true picture of existing problems and create the path to real solutions. I hope to highlight student voices and bring attention to the experiences of young people, the people directly affected by policies around education.”