March 2017
Featured in this insight: Education, Children & young people
Parents stressed by children's exams, survey finds: A recent survey has revealed that children are not the only ones who feel stressed around exam season, with parents admitting that they too feel the strain of their child’s revision schedule and exams.
Of the parents in Britain who took part in the survey for Radio 5 Live, 24 per cent said that their own mental health had been impacted by the stresses of their offspring’s exams. A further 25 per cent said that they had lost sleep because they were fretting over their child’s exams.
42 per cent of the parents in the survey said that they felt like inadequate parents because they did not know how to help their children with their revision. Further to this, 31 per cent said that they had offered their child a monetary incentive to revise, in the hope of them getting better grades.
Of the parents, 52 per cent said that they would like more advice and help on how to best support their kids during exam season.
The Radio 5 Live survey questioned 830 British parents of children aged between 11 and 18 years old to reach the findings.
One respondent told the researchers: "I can't help her very well academically... you feel the pressure on yourself. The system has changed so much over time - they learn things differently."
One mother added: "It's hard as a parent because you're not quite sure how productive the time is, if it's effective revision, whether he's procrastinating and not really revising."
An additional mother said: "It's hard - you don't have anything there for you because it's all focussed on the children."
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