A guide for parents · All year, most of all from the mocks to the summer
How to help your child revise
The most useful things a parent can do are practical: a quiet place to work, a routine with breaks, enough sleep, and testing your child on what they are learning rather than asking whether they have revised. The research on revision favours testing and spacing it out over rereading, and a parent asking questions is a simple way to provide both.
What helps
A regular time and place to work, free of phones, does a lot on its own, because it removes the daily decision about whether to start. So does a plan: sitting down once with the exam dates and the list of subjects, and helping to spread them over the weeks, gives your child something to follow and you something to ask about.
Testing them is the most useful thing you can do without knowing the subject. Ask the questions on their flashcards, read out a past paper question and hear the answer, or ask them to explain a topic to you from memory. Being asked to recall something is how memory is strengthened, and it shows both of you what has not stuck yet.
What tends not to help
Asking whether they have revised usually gets “yes” and an argument, while asking what they got wrong in today’s questions gets a more useful answer. Hours spent rereading notes or copying them out neatly look like work but, in the largest review of the research, rereading did far less than testing.
Late nights and all-day sessions before an exam also cost more than they give. Sleep matters to memory, and a child who is tired on the day loses marks they had earned.
Spotting a problem early
Mock results and the marked papers that come back from school are the clearest signal. Look at where the marks were lost rather than the grade: a topic that was never learnt is easy to fix in January and hard in May, and a pattern of unfinished papers points to timing rather than knowledge.
Anxiety that stops them starting, or revision that never seems to produce better marks, are worth talking to the school about. Teachers can often say what is going wrong in one sentence.
When is a tutor worth it?
A tutor helps most with one subject that is well behind, with exam technique in a subject they know but lose marks in, or with a child who works better with someone other than a parent. A tutor can set work between lessons and check it, which takes the testing out of the kitchen.
Where to check
- Dunlosky and others (2013), Improving students’ learning with effective learning techniques
- Cepeda and others (2006), Distributed practice in verbal recall tasks
Checked against these on . The rules change from year to year, so the pages above are the ones to trust if anything here disagrees with them.
Common questions
How can I help my child revise if I do not know the subject?
Test them. Read out the questions from their flashcards or a past paper and check the answer against the mark scheme, or ask them to explain a topic to you. You do not need to know the answer to hear whether they can recall it.
How much revision should a Year 11 do?
Little and often through the year, building up after the mocks. Several short sessions of testing a day in the weeks before the exams is plenty for most students, with at least one day off each week.
Should I take my child’s phone away while they revise?
Keeping it in another room during a session helps most people concentrate, and agreeing that together works better than taking it. Many flashcard apps are on phones, so the phone can be part of revision at other times.
My child says they revise but their marks do not improve. Why?
Often because the revision is rereading or making notes rather than testing. Ask to see the questions they have answered and marked, and move the time towards questions and past papers.