The marks you’re upset about are someone else’s dream

How much did you score in your board exams — and did it feel, even for a moment, like you were on top of the world when you saw it, before the mind quietly drifted to what could have been better?

It is a question that carries more weight today than it once did, not just about marks, but about expectation, comparison, and the quiet pressure that now gathers around a single number on a screen.

Half a century ago, a score of around 75 per cent in a board examination would have been considered a solid result, accompanied by a quiet sense of satisfaction. There were no rankings circulating the moment results were declared, no instant comparisons, no rapid rewriting of achievement into competition. The result stood as it was meant to be — a measure of performance, not identity, and certainly not a public verdict.

If that same score were placed in today’s classrooms, it would likely leave a student well down the rankings in a far more competitive environment. That thought stayed with me while observing the wave of board examination results across the UAE this past week, as thousands of students logged in with racing hearts, waiting for numbers that now seem heavier than the exam itself was ever meant to carry.

Measures of opportunity

Because marks are no longer just marks. They have become measures of opportunity, signals of future pathways, and, increasingly, markers of identity. They open doors, shape direction, and influence opportunity, but they also begin, quietly and almost invisibly, to define worth in ways that extend far beyond the classroom.

And that is where something subtle changes.

A student scoring 92 per cent does not feel relief for long, because somewhere, someone has 96. A good result stands only briefly before it is measured against a higher benchmark. Achievement arrives, but rarely settles. Even strong performance begins to feel temporary, as though it requires constant validation.

Parents feel it. Children absorb it. Social media intensifies it further, turning private results into public benchmarks where celebration and comparison happen almost simultaneously.

Sharp competition

None of this is accidental. It reflects a world where competition is sharper, pathways are narrower, and outcomes feel closely tied to opportunity and future security. The pressure is real, and it is not something to dismiss or minimise.

But pressure narrows vision.

What often gets lost is the quiet privilege surrounding many students who feel overwhelmed in the moment of results. Schools with strong systems, committed teachers, structured environments, and parents deeply involved in their journey form a foundation that previous generations could only imagine. These are meaningful advantages, even if they gradually fade into normality.

Familiarity erases gratitude.

A home feels like noise instead of warmth.

Guidance becomes expectation instead of care.

Routine becomes burden instead of support.

Paradox of abundance

Yet elsewhere, these same conditions would be seen as stability, structure, and opportunity — things actively desired rather than quietly questioned.

That is the paradox of abundance: it stops being visible when it becomes normal, and is only fully recognised in its absence.

Perhaps education itself may benefit from a quieter shift in mindset — one that recognises achievement beyond marks alone, without diminishing their importance or their role in shaping future pathways.

Not less ambition. Not less effort. But a broader definition of success than a single number allows.

Because at some point, it becomes worth asking whether we are still using marks to measure performance — or slowly allowing them to measure people.

And somewhere, even now, there is a student looking at those same numbers not as a setback, but as a beginning they are still striving toward, step by step, with possibilities still open ahead.

- Michael Guzder is Executive Vice-President ‑ Education at GEMS