We’re sharing advice for young people, parents and carers during exams period.
Between 1 April 2024–31 March 2025, Childline delivered 1,647 counselling sessions where the young person mentioned exam/revision stress, an average of 137 counselling sessions per month.
Our monthly counselling sessions about exam/revision stress peaked in May 2024 with 359 counselling sessions, which is over two and half times higher than the monthly average.
Where age was known, half (50%) of counselling sessions were with young people aged 12–15, around two fifths (39%) were aged 16–18, while 11% were aged 11 and under.
Some of the key themes that young people shared with Childline on this topic included:
- Putting pressure on themselves to do well
- Feeling pressure from parents and family members
- Struggling to balance revision and other parts of life like friends and hobbies
- Losing sleep over revision, exams and the idea of failing
- Feeling conflicted between knowing breaks can help with revision and stress, but feeling guilty for taking breaks
- Comparison to friends in how well they’re doing in class/mock exams and how much revision they’re doing
- Not having motivation to revise because it is hard and being convinced that they will fail regardless
- Feeling hopeless about the future if they don’t do well in exams.