Recent education research raises concerns about the damage low attainment designation can do to pupils' self-worth but there has been little detailed exploration of the dynamics of this. Using in-depth interview data, this article explores how four pupils experience and respond to their low attainment, and their struggles to maintain their self-worth. It identifies three pressures they experience: the pressure to perform academically, to assume full responsibility for this performance and to maintain a positive mental attitude. I suggest that these can usefully be seen as forming a triangle of mutually reinforcing pressures that can put 'low attainers' in an impossible position where they feel shamed, blamed and stigmatised for their low attainment while expected to deny or overcome the distress this can cause them.