When my child is a few months from a major exam, I want to know what the remaining time should be spent on, so we revise the right things instead of everything.

Job context

Who

A parent of a student in their final year

When

Three to six months before the exam

Trigger

The exam timetable is published and every other parent starts talking about it

Situation

The remaining time is finite and countable; the list of things to revise is not

Constraints

The day cannot be extended, and the child's health is a real limit

5 Pains

• Does not know what to leave out

  High

  Revising everything is impossible; dropping the wrong thing loses the easiest marks.

  Root cause: Nobody maps the child's current ability onto how the paper allocates marks

• Anxiety spreads from parent to child

  High

  The closer they watch the more they worry, and the child reads that worry before anyone says it.

  Root cause: There is no measure of progress except mock scores

• Mock scores swing up and down

  Medium

  Two papers of different difficulty give opposite conclusions about the same child.

  Root cause: Mock papers are not calibrated to a common scale

• Pays for revision classes without knowing if they work

  Medium

  With no baseline, no improvement can be attributed to any class.

  Root cause: Nobody measures before starting

• The child burns out before the exam

  High

  A dense revision plan is paid for in sleep, and sleep is what holds memory.

  Root cause: Plans are built in hours, not in capacity

5 Desired Outcomes

• Know what is worth revising and what can be dropped

  Functional

• Have a progress measure that holds steady week to week

  Functional

• Keep the child's stamina intact until exam day

  Functional

• Pass less anxiety on to the child

  Emotional

• Answer relatives' questions without feeling defensive

  Social

5 Existing Solutions

A solution is not the same thing as a product — a customer can hire a behaviour or a workaround too.

• Exam cram school

  Service

  Sells certainty about schedule, not certainty about priorities.

• Printed mock paper packs

  Product

  Measures, but each pack has its own scale so nothing compares over time.

• Exam-focused tutor

  Service

  The only party actually making the drop-this decision for the family.

• Ask parents from last year's cohort

  Behaviour

  Real experience, but of a different child in a different year.

• A homemade countdown spreadsheet

  Workaround

  The parent builds the time-allocation tool nobody sells.

2 Opportunity Gaps

• Everyone sells more revision hours; nobody sells the decision of what to drop.

  Why existing solutions fail: Advising to drop something means owning the risk if it appears on the paper, so no provider wants their name on that call.

  Potential opportunity: A time-allocation plan that states the trade-off numerically so the family can own the call.

• Nobody treats sleep and stamina as part of the revision plan.

  Why existing solutions fail: Providers are judged on hours delivered, and advising rest reduces that number.

  Potential opportunity: A revision plan budgeted in capacity, where rest is a scheduled item rather than the leftover.