Abstract
Many teachers in higher education will have experiences of the debilitating effects of stress on student motivation, performance and well-being. Dave Putwain (‘Examination stress and test anxiety’, December 2008) discusses some of the key reasons leading to examination stress in GCSE students, and these are of course also valid to other student groups. However, as someone who has been running stress management workshops for both undergraduate and postgraduate students, I believe further elaboration and extension is needed in explaining some of the causes of exam stress at the university level.