By Tendai Makaripe
At about 2 a.m., James (not real name) sat alone with his phone glowing in the dark, waiting for the Zimbabwe School Examinations Council portal to load.
“I was shaking,” said the 19-year-old Advanced Level candidate at a boys’ high school in central Harare.
“My heart was racing.”
He had delayed it for hours, telling his parents the site had too much traffic.
But anxiety kept climbing, not just about the grades, he said, but about the conversation he knew was coming.
His father had urged him to switch course and apply for a programme at Harare Polytechnic after his ordinary level results. James refused.
He chose sciences anyway: mathematics, biology and chemistry.
When the page finally opened, the letters hit him like a verdict: an E pass in maths and biology and a fail in chemistry.
Just two points.
“My worst fears were confirmed,” he said.
“I couldn’t sleep. I thought of leaving the house and running away. ‘What will I tell my friends? My parents? My relatives?”
By morning, he had already walked out of the gate.
He sent his parents a screenshot of his results instead.
James’ story is playing out in thousands of homes across Zimbabwe as results arrive, Grade 7, Form 4 and Upper 6, separating celebrations from silence, and sometimes turning ordinary living rooms into interrogation rooms.
This year’s Grade 7 national pass rate was 48.49%, with 389,626 candidates sitting for six subjects and 188,930 passing all six, according to the Zimbabwe Examinations Council.
The exam body also reported a 95.75% pass rate, defined as getting Grade E or better in at least two subjects, a threshold that many universities and competitive programmes still consider too weak for entry.
Cambridge results for the same November 2025 examination series followed a similar January rhythm, with Cambridge International listing AS/A Level results released on January 9, 2026, and IGCSE/O Level results released on January 15, 2026.
In Zimbabwe, as in many countries, results season can trigger something deeper than disappointment: shame, panic, and a fear of being reduced to a number.
“Mental health is a critical part of adolescents’ well-being as they navigate the many challenges of growing up,” UNICEF notes in a Zimbabwe mental-health factsheet that also warns that suicide is a leading cause of death among young people globally. The danger is not only what happens in the exam room, but also what happens after, in the days when a teenager’s mind replays the moment again and again, searching for a way to undo it.
James describes that loop in physical terms.
He says he sweated through the night.
His hands trembled. He could not eat properly.
He could not sleep.
He started bargaining with reality: maybe the portal was wrong, perhaps the page had not loaded fully, maybe it would look different in the morning.
“That is a recognised pattern in high-stress evaluation moments, where fear hijacks concentration, memory and decision-making,” said psychologist Ivy Mukombachoto.
Studies over many years show that test anxiety can lower performance, even for learners who study hard.
That helps explain something many students find painful: a learner can do “everything right” and still fall short, while another who seems careless may pass.
Effort matters, but other things matter too.
“Teaching quality differs. Exams may test topics in unfamiliar ways. Some students fall sick during exams. Others carry stress from home. Anxiety itself can also weigh a learner down,” said one Chemistry teacher from Harare who requested anonymity.
The deeper harm often comes after the results, when a bad grade stops being an event and becomes a label.
Research by the Children’s Voices found that in many Zimbabwean families, results can feel like a judgment of character, proof of discipline, obedience or future “value.”
The pressure is not always loud. It can show up quietly: a parent who goes silent, a relative who keeps calling, a neighbour who asks at the gate, “Wabuda sei?”
Even adults who mean well can make it worse by pushing a learner to “move on” too fast: “Stop crying.” “Be strong.” “Others managed.”
Those words can increase shame at the very moment the child needs safety and understanding.
“But grief has its own timetable, and results can trigger real mourning, not only for the marks, but for the dream a student built around them,” said social commentator Joeline Matsika.
A 2016 UK review of child suicide cases, for example, found that exams and exam results featured in a significant share of deaths, underlining how academic pressure can form part of a dangerous mix when a young person feels trapped.
The lesson for parents is not panic but attention.
Social worker Lisa William said, “If a student talks about running away, says they feel like a burden, gives away possessions, withdraws completely, starts using substances suddenly, or speaks about death as ‘a way out,’ adults should treat that as a warning sign, not teenage drama.
For many students, the cruelty does not come only from home.
It comes from the public scoreboard.
Social media has turned results into content.
Those who pass, post screenshots, smiling selfies, and captions about “hard work paying off.”
The posts can be innocent, even inspiring, but they also create a brutal contrast for the student sitting in the dark, trying to build courage for a login page.
Health authorities and researchers have increasingly warned that social media can intensify social comparison and emotional distress for some adolescents.
A youth mental-health consultation published by UNICEF in Zimbabwe notes that young people praise social media for sharing information, yet also report it as a major cause of anxiety.
And when classmates or strangers start commenting, teasing or comparing, the harm can grow.
A Zimbabwe high-school study on cyberbullying found it can damage learners’ mental health and self-esteem, and it reported links to severe distress, including suicidal thoughts.
For a student like James, that online celebration can feel like salt in a wound, not because others succeeded, but because the failure becomes louder, more public, harder to escape.
That is why a supportive response cannot be reduced to “try harder next time.”
The first job is emotional first aid.
A lower six student at St Johns Emerald Hill, James Tichaendepi, said parents do not need perfect words.
“They need the right posture: calm, close, and curious. Start with what the child is feeling before discussing what the child will do,” he said.
Tichaendepi recently did well in his O-level exams and is now facing the A-level challenge.
“Instead of ‘Why did you do this to yourself?’ try: ‘I can see this hurts. Talk to me.” Instead of “Your cousin passed,” try: “You are still our child. This result does not change that.” Instead of a lecture, offer a cup of tea and a quiet room.”
Research on motivation suggests that how adults frame failure matters.
Work linked to psychologist Carol Dweck’s “mindset” research has shown that when children experience mistakes as a catastrophe, especially through adults’ reactions, they are more likely to develop a fixed view of ability, making them fear challenges and hide struggles.
That does not mean parents should pretend results do not matter. It means they should separate the child’s worth from the child’s score, then build a plan.
A plan can begin simply: sleep, food, routine, and one honest conversation without an audience.
It can include practical next steps: re-sitting subjects, bridging options, technical and vocational pathways, or taking a short, structured break while applying for alternatives.
It can also include small guardrails: limiting doom-scrolling, muting class WhatsApp groups for a few days, and asking relatives to stop calling about results.
None of those steps removes the sting.
But they reduce the sense of suffocation.
Failure feels permanent when a teenager cannot see the next door.
Adults can help by opening doors without using them as punishment.
Child rights advocate Fungai Chiwashira argues that sometimes the most powerful support is to normalise the reality that many successful people have failed exams, failed courses, failed interviews, and lived to tell the story.
“Writer Samuel Beckett captured that stubborn survival in a line often quoted in schools and recovery rooms: “Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better,” he said. Basketball legend Michael Jordan made a similar point about the long arc of success, describing repeated misses and losses as part of why he succeeded.
These quotes can help students understand that failure is not a life sentence but information, painful information, that can still be used.
For James, the hardest part was not the two points.
It was the story he imagined others would tell about him.
That story can be rewritten, but not by force.
It starts when parents and schools allow a student to feel what they feel, without humiliation.
It grows when adults treat results day as a moment for care, not performance.
And it becomes real when a teenager is guided, step by step, from “my life is over” to “my life is changing direction.”
James says his parents did not throw him out.
They did not mock him. They stayed.
But he still wakes up with the portal screen in his mind and the fear in his body.
“I was shaking,” he said.
That is what failure looks like, up close and why the country’s most important results conversation may not be about marks at all, but about mercy.
