School days are the best of your life, we’re told. Except at exam time.

The stress suffered by teenagers sitting tests that could decide their future can be huge.

Now a new campaign has been launched with 12 young coaches who have been through the brain crush of exams offering help and advice to those experiencing it for the first time.

BBC Learning has created The Mind Set, the UK’s first national peer-to-peer coaching network for GCSE and National students.

The teenage advisors are from all sorts of backgrounds from across the UK, and they’re not all A* students.

Some took resits, others battled against illness or family difficulties during their exams.

One thing they all have in common is that they found a way to reach their own potential.

James Joyce from Penrith is one of the 12.

Now 18, James struggled in school and experienced depression when he was studying and taking his exams and gained three GCSEs.

He admits he was quite badly behaved at school, didn’t like being told what to do and didn’t understand why he couldn’t focus.

After he received his results, he experienced “very depressed thoughts”.

He underwent counselling and it was discovered that James has ADHD.

At first he didn’t understand it and he just assumed that he was ‘angry’ but then he learned about the condition and the many different elements to it.

He also learned different ways in which he would need to learn/revise in order to be successful.

Looking back on his schooldays he says: “I was always told off for being distracted, not paying attention and forgetting things.

“It always seemed I was badly behaved.

“Up until Year 10, I did not have my mind set on what I wanted to do.

“I was always in trouble it was constantly laid on you that if you fail school you will not get anywhere.”

James says he made a real effort and got his course work levels up to grade Cs and Bs but when it came to the actual exams, he was hit by a viral infection on the week of the exams.

He ended up with GCSEs in Maths, English and IT.

“When I got my results I felt at the time that they were completely worthless.

“You are told you are not going to get anywhere. I felt I had totally failed and it got me down.

“After the results I had no motivation to see friends and I was not applying myself to anything.

Thanks to the support of his family and getting diagnosed as ADHD, James has turned his life around.

He is currently studying computer game design at Carlisle College and is also heavily involved in National Citizen’s Service.

He is aiming to take a gap year next year and possibly help out with the Camp America scheme or with the NCS.

He says: “It took me a year into college when I got the second best grade of all and realised that it was not down to my grades to decide my future.

“Despite my grades, my whole family said ‘ you can make a difference’.

“What I have definitely learned looking back at things is that nothing is ever as bad as you think it is.

“No matter what stress you are going through.

“For starters, you have to talk to people.

“I kept my thoughts and emotions pent up and they got really bad.

“You always forget that your parents and everyone around you is going through it too.

“You think no-one understands, but you have to remember that even if you don’t do great, there are different roads you can go down.

“You can’t listen to people telling you that you can’t do these things.

“I hate is when people are dismissive and say you can’t achieve anything.

“Use that negativity as a platform. It seems really negative but given the circumstances of the ADHD and illness, it is not bad at all.

“I’m getting involved in really great things now.”

For more information and help from Mind Set, go to http://www.bbc.co.uk/education/highlights/curations/zpbdxfr