Should I check my child's revision? Where the line is

The short answer: check the work, not the person

Checking your teenager's revision is reasonable. Checking on your teenager is a different thing, and the two get confused because they feel the same from the landing. The first means looking at what the revision produced: a marked paper, a topic explained without the notes, a plan with ticks on it. The second means looking at the person — the phone, the browser tabs, the bedroom door, the hours. The first tells you whether learning is happening. The second tells you whether they are at the desk, which is not the same question, and it is the one that starts the arguments.

So: yes, check. Once a week, briefly, on something they made and agreed to show you. And no, do not monitor — not because teenagers deserve privacy in the abstract, though they do, but because monitoring gives you worse information at a higher price. A monitored teenager produces evidence of revising. An unmonitored one who has agreed to be checked produces revision.

The rest of this piece is about where the line sits, how it moves between Year 9 and Year 11, and what to settle before the first row rather than during it.

Checking versus surveillance

The difference is not how often you look. It is what you look at, and whether they know.

A useful test for any particular check: would you be happy to explain it to them in advance, and have them say no? If the check only works when they do not know about it, it is surveillance, whatever you call it.

What is reasonable at 13, 14 and 16

The line moves, and it should move towards the student. Managing your own learning — planning it, noticing when it is not working, changing approach — is a skill that has to be taught and then handed over, not assumed. The Education Endowment Foundation's guidance on metacognition is explicit that pupils need to practise it with gradually less support. A Year 9 needs scaffolding. A Year 11 who is still being scaffolded has not been given the chance to learn the thing that matters most in an exam hall, which is managing themselves.

Year 9 (13 to 14)

Reasonable: helping build the first routine, sitting in on the first few sessions, seeing the plan every week, being the person who reads flashcards aloud. Reasonable to look at the exercise book and the school portal. Not reasonable: reading messages, checking the browser history, or requiring the door to stay open.

Year 10 (14 to 15)

Reasonable: a weekly look at something they produced, agreed on a Sunday; asking what went wrong in a mock; helping weight the subjects when the first mocks approach. The routine should now be theirs to keep. You are moving from co-pilot to passenger, and the handover is the point of the year.

Year 11 (15 to 16)

Reasonable: asking, once a week, what the plan is and what got tested; being available as a tester; seeing the mock paper if it is offered. The timetable is theirs. If you are still checking it nightly in Year 11, the problem is not the revision.

What to agree in advance

Almost every revision row is a check that was never agreed. Settle the terms on a calm Sunday and write them down, because the thing that gets renegotiated later is the definition of "done".

1. What you will look at. One thing a week that they produced: a marked paper, a plan with ticks, a topic explained aloud. Name it.
2. When. A fixed ten minutes, chosen by them. Not the foot of the stairs at nine in the evening.
3. What you will not look at. Say it: not the phone, not messages, not the notes themselves unless invited. This is the sentence that buys the honesty.
4. What happens if it is not there. Not a punishment — a question: "what got in the way, and what changes this week?" Consequences are for behaviour; missed revision is a planning problem.
5. How it changes. Agree now that checks get lighter each term if the routine holds. Reduction is the reward.

Agree it as a trade, not a rule. You get a weekly answer to "is any of this happening?"; they get you out of the bedroom for the other six days. Both sides are getting something, which is what makes it hold.

Why reading their phone backfires

Some parents read the phone, the browser history or the notes because it feels like the only way to know. It gives the wrong information, and it comes with a large bill.

The wrong information, because a phone tells you about attention, not learning. A teenager with YouTube open in one tab may have just finished a genuinely hard forty minutes of self-testing; one with only the revision site open may have re-read the same page for an hour. The thing you want to know — did anything go in? — is not on the screen.

The bill, because the moment they realise, and they will, every honest answer you have been getting stops. Teenagers who believe they are monitored optimise for looking busy: the revision site left open in a tab, the door ajar, the right answer to "how is it going?" You will have converted a student who sometimes told you the truth into one who manages you. And the cost is not confined to revision; the next thing they decide not to tell you may matter more.

If you are reading the phone because you are worried about something other than revision — mood, friendships, what they are looking at — that is a different conversation and a worthwhile one, but have it as itself rather than dressed up as checking homework. If they will not have it with you, Childline exists so that they can have it with someone, and it is fine to say so.

What an app should and should not show a parent

A revision app is one place a parent's view could live, and it is where the checking-versus-surveillance line is easiest to get wrong, because an app can technically show you everything. Whether it should is a design decision, and it is worth knowing which decision a given app has made before you install it.

A reasonable parent view shows output and rhythm: whether sessions are happening, roughly how much time, which subjects are strong and weak, what is coming up. It does not show the student's individual answers, their notes, or conversations with a tutor feature, and it does not exist without the student's knowledge. That is the difference between a progress report and a keylogger. It also lines up with the ICO's Children's Code, which expects services used by under-18s to be transparent with the young person about what is shared and with whom, and to default to the least intrusive setting.

Most revision apps share nothing with parents at all, which is a defensible position rather than an oversight; we go through what each one actually exposes in Revision apps parents can see progress in. FacilStudy, the app we are building, sits on the checking side of the line by design: the student invites one adult as a Study Partner, that adult sees the streak, time studied, mastery per subject, topics needing attention and upcoming tests — never the photos, the answers or the tutor chats — and the student can revoke the invitation from the app at any time. It is in testing rather than in the shops, so what exists today is a waiting list.

Whatever you use, apply the test from earlier: could you explain the view to them and have them say no? A view the student agreed to is a check. One imposed on a fifteen-year-old will be worked around, and you will have spent the trust for nothing.

When checking is not the problem

Sometimes the urge to check is really a worry about something else, and a weekly look at a past paper will not settle it. The signs that it is something else are the ones that would worry a teacher: over two or three weeks, they cannot say what they did; one subject is avoided every time; sleep, appetite or mood have changed; the work has become frantic, or has stopped entirely.

In that case the next step is not a tighter check but a wider conversation — with them first, then with the form tutor or head of year, who see the classroom version and will usually tell you plainly what they are seeing. The nightly-argument version of all this, and how to get out of it, is in How to help your teenager revise without the arguments.