You can’t revise for them. That’s the uncomfortable starting point, and it’s why exam season is so hard on parents — the outcome matters enormously and almost everything that determines it is outside your control.
What you can control is the environment, the logistics and the temperature of the house. Those things matter more than they sound. Here’s what’s worth doing, roughly in the order you’ll need it.
Quick answer
– Most of what a parent can usefully do in exam season is logistics, food and sleep.
– Asking how revision is going, daily, is the single most counterproductive habit.
– Know the difference between exam nerves and something that needs help – and where to go for it.
Six weeks out: the things only a parent can do
You cannot revise for them. You can remove almost everything that makes revising harder.
Find out the actual dates. Not “exams are in May”. The specific papers, on specific days, at specific times. Schools issue personal timetables; ask for it and put it on the fridge and in your own calendar.
Protect the calendar. Move the family wedding, the long weekend away, the redecorating. This is the one thing you can do that genuinely buys them time.
Fix the space. A desk, a chair, a door that closes, decent light. It doesn’t have to be a study — a corner of a dining room works. What matters is that it’s not a bed.
Sort the supplies once. Paper, pens, a printer that works, past papers printed if that’s how they revise. Removing small frictions removes small excuses.
Ask what their plan is, once. Not whether they have one — what it is. If the answer is vague, our revision timetable guide has a template they can follow, and you can offer it without running it.
During revision: the useful kind of involvement
Ask about the topic, not the hours. “What are you working on today?” beats “how long have you revised?” — the second question gets a number that means nothing and starts an argument.
Offer to test them. Hand them the mark scheme and let them explain an answer to you. This is retrieval practice, it’s the most effective revision activity there is, and you don’t need to know the subject to do it.
Feed them properly and keep the sleep normal. Sleep does more for exam performance than an extra hour of revision, and it’s the first thing to go.
Get them outside once a day. A walk is not wasted revision time.
Don’t compare them to anyone. Not siblings, not the neighbour’s daughter, not yourself at that age.
Notice effort rather than predicted grades. Praise for effort is something they can act on. Praise for being clever is something they can lose.
The week of the exams
The job changes from support to logistics.
- Know the times and the venue for every paper, including which ones are morning and which are afternoon.
- Sort transport the night before, not the morning of.
- Make sure the kit is ready: ID, calculator, pens, water, whatever the board allows.
- Keep the mornings quiet. Nothing to do, nothing to argue about, food available.
- Don’t quiz them on the way in. It’s a car journey, not a last revision session.
The night before, and the morning after
Sleep is the one intervention with an unambiguous evidence base: teenagers need eight to ten hours, and the night before an exam is the worst possible night to lose them. If the stress looks like more than nerves, YoungMinds in the UK and headspace in Australia both have parent-facing guidance written for exactly this point in the year.
The night before: early, calm, ordinary. If they want to look at their notes, fine, but by 9pm the useful work is done and everything after that costs sleep.
After each paper, take their word for it and move on. The reconstruction ritual — going through every question with friends afterwards — is corrosive and predicts nothing. If they say it went badly, “the next one is a fresh start” is more useful than either “I’m sure it was fine” or a post-mortem.
When stress is more than exam nerves
Some pressure is normal and even useful. What isn’t normal: not sleeping for a week, not eating, panic attacks, talking about being a failure, withdrawing from everyone.
If you’re seeing that, exams are no longer the main issue. Talk to the school — they’ve seen it before and they have options, including exam access arrangements. Speak to your GP. In the UK, YoungMinds has a parents’ helpline and good material on exam stress specifically; in Australia, headspace does the same.
And say the thing out loud: no exam is worth their health, and there is a route to everything through more than one door.
Results day
Be there, or be reachable. Have a plan for both outcomes, because the day is short and the appeals and clearing processes move fast.
If results are worse than hoped: remarks, resits, clearing, pathway courses, apprenticeships, a gap year. None of these are consolation prizes; they’re ordinary routes that plenty of people take. If results are better than hoped, make sure they know it was their work.
Where a shared planner helps
Seeing the timetable is not the same as managing it. Our guide to helping a teenager get organised covers the systems side, and visibility rather than surveillance covers how much a parent should actually see.
Half of what goes wrong in exam season is information: you didn’t know about a deadline, they didn’t tell you about a paper on Friday, nobody knew the coursework was due.
Family Connect syncs your child’s classes, deadlines, exams and grades from their own planner into an app made for parents, so you can see the week without asking every night. It’s the difference between “have you got much on?” and “you’ve got two papers on Thursday — shall I drive you?”
Parents of students in different systems
The pressure points differ, and knowing yours helps.
GCSEs and A-levels (UK). Mocks in November, the real thing from early May to late June, results in August. Study leave arrangements vary by school — ask, because a fortnight at home with no structure suits some students and undoes others.
IB. Two sessions, May and November, and coursework deadlines that land well before the papers. Much of the grade is decided before the exam season starts.
US high school and college. Midterms in October, finals in December and May, plus standardised testing in the autumn. Grades accumulate all term, so a bad week in September still matters in January.
HSC, VCE and the Australian certificates. A three to four week exam period in October and November, with long and uneven gaps between papers, and ATAR results in December.
What holds across all of them: the calendar is public, the school will give you the dates, and knowing them early is the cheapest advantage available to a parent.
In short
Protect sleep and meals, take chores away for six weeks, and ask about them rather than about the revision. Check the exam board timetables yourself so nobody is relying on memory, and put the dates somewhere the whole house can see – a shared planner does that without turning into a daily check.
FAQ
How can I help my child revise if I don’t know the subject?
Test them from their notes, ask them to explain a topic to you, and time practice papers. None of that needs subject knowledge, and all of it is more useful than rereading.
How much should I push?
Enough that they know you’re paying attention, not so much that revision becomes about you. If most conversations in the house are about exams, it’s too much.
What if they’re doing nothing at all?
Start with a conversation about why rather than about hours. Avoidance is usually fear or not knowing where to start, and both have fixes. If nothing shifts, talk to their tutor early.
Should I pay for a tutor?
Sometimes, for a specific weak subject and with a clear goal. A tutor can’t fix a general refusal to work, and adding one in the last fortnight rarely helps.
What do I say the night before?
Very little. “You’ve done the work, get some sleep, I’ll get you there on time.”
Is it normal for them to be this stressed?
Some nerves, yes. Not sleeping, not eating, or persistent panic is worth a conversation with the school or your GP.
See also: How to monitor your child’s grades without hovering
