LAKS opens stress hotline for 500,000 Dutch exam students
The LAKS stress hotline is now live across the Netherlands, offering free emotional support to secondary school students as the high-stakes exam season begins.
The national Dutch student organisation introduces a dedicated phone line to support pupils struggling with exam anxiety and mental health pressure.
The LAKS stress hotline is now officially open, giving the roughly 500,000 secondary school students sitting national exams in the Netherlands a direct line to emotional support at one of the most pressurised moments of their academic lives. LAKS, the Landelijk Aktie Komitee Scholieren, or National Action Committee for Students, announced the initiative as written and oral examinations began rolling out across Dutch schools this spring.
The hotline is staffed by trained volunteers who are themselves familiar with the Dutch exam system. Students can call, chat, or message the service free of charge. The aim is straightforward: give young people a place to talk through anxiety, fear of failure, and the physical symptoms that exam stress so often triggers, without judgment and without waiting lists.
LAKS has long monitored the exam experience in the Netherlands. Each year the organisation collects thousands of student evaluations of individual exam papers, feeding that data back to the Dutch Ministry of Education. This year, however, the organisation decided that tracking the difficulty of exam questions was no longer enough. Rising reports of stress-related complaints among secondary school pupils prompted the move toward direct mental health support.
Why the LAKS Stress Hotline Matters for Student Well-Being
Mental health among young people in the Netherlands has become a topic of serious concern over the past several years. Research published by Statistics Netherlands (CBS) has consistently shown that feelings of anxiety and burnout among adolescents and young adults have been climbing, a trend that accelerated during and after the disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. For many students, the national exam period, known in Dutch as the eindexamen, represents the single most stressful stretch of their entire school career.
The stakes feel enormous to teenagers: exam results determine access to higher education pathways, influence family expectations, and can shape a young person’s sense of self-worth in ways that linger long after the papers are marked. LAKS acknowledges this reality openly. By positioning the hotline not as a crisis intervention service but as a routine, accessible resource, the organisation hopes to reduce the stigma around asking for help during exam season.
Volunteers manning the hotline have been briefed on common stress triggers, practical coping strategies, and the specific pressures of the Dutch exam calendar. They are not therapists, and the hotline does not replace professional mental health care. Rather, it fills a gap: a friendly, informed ear available precisely when students feel most overwhelmed and least likely to reach out to a parent, teacher, or general practitioner.
LAKS Stress Hotline: Background and Broader Context
The timing of the launch reflects careful planning. Dutch secondary school exams are divided into a school-based component, assessed throughout the year, and a central written exam period administered nationally in May and June. It is during this central period that anxiety tends to peak. Students revise late into the night, sleep schedules collapse, and the pressure of a single test carrying significant weight on a final grade can feel paralysing.
LAKS is no stranger to advocacy on this front. The organisation has previously called on the government to review the weighting of central exams relative to school assessments, arguing that placing so much emphasis on a few days of written tests is inherently stressful and does not reflect the full range of a student’s abilities. The stress hotline can therefore be seen as both a practical support tool and a statement of principle: students deserve better mental health infrastructure around exam time.
Schools and parents are also being encouraged to spread awareness of the hotline. LAKS has distributed information through social media channels popular with Dutch teenagers and has reached out to school counsellors, known as decanen, to ensure that the resource appears in the places students are most likely to look when they feel they are struggling.
For students who find that stress has moved beyond what a phone conversation can address, the hotline volunteers are equipped to signpost callers toward additional professional support, including GP services and youth mental health providers. The goal is never to be the only solution, but to be a visible first step.
What happens next will partly depend on how widely students actually use the service. LAKS has indicated it will evaluate call volumes and feedback at the end of the exam season and use that data to decide whether the hotline should become a permanent, year-round feature or be refined and relaunched each spring. Either way, the organisation has signalled a clear shift: student well-being is no longer a footnote to its exam-monitoring work, it is a central part of the mission.
For any secondary school student in the Netherlands who is feeling the pressure of this exam season, the LAKS stress hotline is available now. Details on how to reach the service, including chat and phone options, can be found through LAKS’s official channels. You do not have to be in crisis to call. Sometimes, just knowing the line is there makes the next revision session a little more manageable.
