Parenting

Helping a child learn to take responsibility for their actions is one of the most important tasks of childhood, and one of the trickiest. The line between healthy accountability and unhelpful shame is finer than…

Academic results matter. But the universities that receive thousands of equally qualified applicants each year are not just looking at grades. They are looking for young people who have led, contributed, committed to something, and…

Problem solving is one of those skills that everyone claims to value and few schools or families teach directly. The teenage years are an ideal time to develop it, because young people are increasingly capable…

Independent study is one of those skills that schools assume teenagers will develop, parents assume schools are teaching, and teenagers themselves often pick up only by trial and error. The truth is that genuine independence…

The personal statement is one of the strangest pieces of writing a teenager will ever attempt. Asked to sum themselves up for a university admissions tutor they will never meet, in a few hundred carefully…

There is a particular look on a child’s face when something has genuinely caught their imagination. A pause, a tilt of the head, a slow widening of the eyes. That moment of wonder is one…

Sleep is one of the most underrated factors in academic success, and it is rarely more important than during the GCSE years. The combination of a heavy academic timetable, the demands of social and emotional…

Exam burnout has become a familiar phrase in many family homes. The pattern often goes the same way. A motivated teenager begins their study programme with energy, gradually narrows their world to a series of…

We spend a lot of time talking about grades, revision strategies, and exam technique, and all of those things matter. But there is an ingredient of academic success that does not always make it onto…