How to Support Your Teen Through Exam Season When You’re Both Working Full-Time (UK)
Guest post by Jono Ellis, CPO at Cognito
Hi, I’m Jono. I run Cognito, a UK GCSE and A-Level revision platform used by about 1.5 million students. Paula very kindly let me write a guest post for Mummy Vs Work, because a big chunk of the parents who reach out to us are juggling exam term and full-time jobs, and they tell us pretty consistently that the standard advice doesn’t quite fit their week.
There isn’t a perfect way to support a teenager through GCSEs while you’re holding down a full-time job, and the sooner we all stop trying to find one, the calmer everyone gets. Here’s what comes up most often in the working-parent families that handle exam term well.
Set the structure once, not every day
Working parents don’t have time for daily nagging, and teenagers don’t respond to it anyway. The pattern that consistently works is a single Sunday-evening conversation: agree the weekly structure together (e.g. revision blocks Monday to Thursday after dinner, lighter Fridays, one solid Sunday morning session) and stick it on the fridge. That ten-minute conversation, once, replaces fifteen smaller battles a week.
Use commute time as check-in time
The school run, the drive to a club, the walk to the bus. Those slivers of time are where the best conversations happen. Not “how’s revision going” (you’ll get “fine”), but something more specific, like “what’s been the hardest topic this week?” or “is there a teacher you wish you could just have a proper chat with?” The car is genuinely one of the best places in the country to find out what’s actually going on with a teen.
Outsource what you can to the right tool
This is where working parents have to be a bit ruthless. You don’t have time to re-teach electrolysis at 9 pm. Cognito is the platform we built for exactly this kind of evening: short videos for GCSE Science and Maths, exam-board-aligned, with practice questions that drill the weak topics. It’s free to use (with some limits on the free tier), so you can have a play before paying anything. Once your teen’s set up with a platform that does the explaining for them, your evening becomes about supporting rather than teaching. If your teen finds it useful, Mummy Vs Work readers get 20% off Pro with the code PAULA20.
The slow-cooker dinner is a revision tool, honestly
A hot meal on the table at 6.30 when both parents have just got home means everyone’s eaten, you’ve all sat down for ten minutes, and the revision block doesn’t start on low blood sugar. Slow cooker on at 7.30am, dinner sorted before you’ve even opened your laptop. It’s the single most useful piece of admin in exam term for most working families we hear from.
Calendar everything, including the worrying
Mock dates, exam dates, parents’ evenings, results day. All in the shared family calendar. Even better, block ten minutes a week in your own diary to think specifically about how your teen is doing. It sounds slightly clinical when written down, and it really does make a difference. It turns the worry that follows you around all week into worry you can actually do something useful with.
No-guilt rules for the working parent (UK edition)
You can’t be at every parents’ evening. You can’t always be home by 5 pm. Your teen doesn’t actually need you to. What they need is a steady, predictable, present-when-it-matters version of you, not a guilt-ridden, exhausted, over-promising one.
If I had to give one piece of advice to another working parent heading into a GCSE term, it would be this. Lower the bar on the small stuff and raise it on the big stuff. Skip the perfect home-cooked dinner. Make sure you’re at the parents’ evening. Skip the daily revision check-in. Make sure you’ve got Sunday properly blocked out for a real catch-up. And skip the guilt entirely, because it doesn’t help any of you.
It’s the only version of this that actually holds together when you’re juggling work and an exam term at the same time. The rest will sort itself out.
Guest post by Jono Ellis, CPO at Cognito. Partnered with Mummy Vs Work. Cognito is free to use. Readers get 20% off Cognito Pro with the code PAULA20.
