Results day: guidance for parents
11 August 2026
Katharine Radice, education consultant and author of The Parent’s Guide to Exam Stress
If you’re keen to support your teenager in a practical, positive way on results day, here are some strategies that will help.
Results day can feel like a melting pot of strong emotions and it can be hard as a parent to feel like you’re getting your response right. Parents often tell me that their teens react angrily to whatever they say: well-meaning advice doesn’t always land well and families can be left feeling unsure about how to find a calm, constructive route through.
Results day is high-octane emotionally for several reasons: there’s the waiting, the competitive comparisons, the knock-on consequences for what happens next. But there’s also the tension of different sets of expectations: teachers, families or friends may have different opinions about what a teenager should be doing – and there are the expectations a teenager sets for themselves as well. When grades land, will your teen feel they’ve met these expectations and got the hoped-for results? Will there be whoops of celebration and delight? Or will it be a day framed by disappointment and the feeling of could-have / should-have done better?
As a parent, it’s worth being ready in advance so that you can help your teen find a positive route through: read on for my top tips on how to support your teen constructively, whatever shakes out on the day.
1. Remember, they’re not your results
As parents, we all carry with us the baggage from our own time at school and your sense of ‘good results’ will probably be calibrated to the type of results which would have made you feel proud when you were a teenager. It’s often the case, though, that achievements look different in different generations. Try to hold back from colouring the atmosphere with a reaction that’s tied to your context rather than your child’s. Ask your child in advance what they’re hoping for and why. If they’re happy with a result, celebrate alongside them. If they’re disappointed, be compassionate and respectful of their own, individual response.
2. Talk it through in advance
The nerves on results day typically centre around the risk of disappointment. Teenagers usually find the prospect of disappointing themselves – or others – painful and uncomfortable. This means that teens often don’t think in advance about what they’d do if their results aren’t as they’d hoped. You can help your teen feel steadier if you support them in preparing a game plan in advance.
First, find out the emotional support they think they’d need from you: for some teens, this might be space or time on their own; others will want to chat things through with their families straight away. Then run through the practical next steps of what a Plan B might look like. Discussing this in advance will help your teen be ready to navigate the day more effectively, whatever their grades look like.
3. Provide a counterbalance to keep grades in perspective
Grades matter - there’s no denying this – but they’re not the only thing that matters. The challenge for teenagers is that in the run up to GCSEs, A Levels or similar, grades can end up dominating the air-time. This means that other things, such as reliability, cheerfulness, honesty, kindness or practical skills, can fade from view. You can help your teen keep a balanced view about their results by reminding them about all the things you value and love about them. This will help them remember the parts of their self-worth which aren’t at stake on results day.
4. Avoid playing the blame game
If your teen doesn’t study in the way you’d like them to, the run-up to exams can be frustrating and full of daily nagging – or shouting – about revision. If the results make you think that your teen has underachieved, it’s very tempting to use the grades as evidence that you were right and your child got their approach all wrong. I’d encourage you to hold back from retrospective blame: by the time your child is 16 or older, responding with anger is very unlikely to generate a constructive conversation about anything: instead, your teen is likely to pull away, get angry or claim they don’t care. Try instead to face forwards and focus on positive next steps.
5. Read the information from the school
Sometimes things do go wrong with results and options are available for reviewing or checking the marks, but the process for applying for these is handled by the school’s exam team. Make sure you’ve read the information the school has shared about deadlines, practicalities and points of contact.
6. For GCSEs, remember the lead-up
GCSEs are in view for a very long time: by the time your teenager sat their exams, they’ll have been hearing about exam technique and mark schemes for two years or more. As a parent, it may feel to you now like your GCSEs (or similar) are much less important than other things in your life, but it probably won’t feel that way in the short-term to your child. If your teen is disappointed by their results, they’ll need you to take their feelings seriously. Time feels different to a teenager: even a couple of months can feel far, far away. Knowing that they’ll feel differently in the future doesn’t mean that your child doesn’t need empathy and compassion in the short-term.
7. If your teen is in Y13, role model flexibility
Results can feel very definitive when they’re tied to university offers or training programmes. If your teen misses their grades for their first choice option, you don’t need to pretend that Plan B is just as attractive as Plan A, but it will really help if you’re positive about its upsides. Role-modeling flexibility and a positive outlook will help your teen pivot and make the best of what comes next.
8. And finally…. don’t forget about siblings
If there’s more than one child in your family, you’ll know that teenagers often anchor self-esteem around comparisons with siblings. Grades can generate painful emotions such as jealousy, self-doubt or resentment, so it’s a good idea to check in with siblings about how they’re feeling. It's reassuring for a teen to know that a mixed set of feelings can be a natural response; it’s also helpful to remind them that grades measure skill in one particular subject, not how loved or valued a person is overall.
Stay connected
There’s a student page on our website, with lots of useful information. If you have any questions, you can call us on 01223 553998 or email us on support@ocr.org.uk.
About the author
Katharine Radice has more than 20 years’ experience in the classroom, working in a wide range of schools. As an education consultant, she now advises schools and parents nationally and internationally on how to support teenagers through exams. She is the author of The Parent’s Guide to Exam Stress (Bloomsbury). Find her on Substack here.
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