Make a realistic weekly family practice agreement

Quick Answer

Sit down together and write four things: which days, how long each session lasts, when a session stops early, and when you will look back at the week. Agree to less than you think you need, then adjust after the first week. The worksheet below has a column for your child and a column for you, and both of you sign it.

Who is this agreement for?

A parent and a child in Years 4 to 8 who are preparing for an entrance test and keep having the same conversation about practice. It works for OC, Selective, scholarship and placement preparation alike, because it says nothing about the exam itself.

It is written to be read aloud together, at a table, with a pen. The rules are your family's own, and this page gives you one place to write them down.

What should a practice agreement cover?

• Days. Your child picks from the days you offer, so you keep the limits and they keep a say.
• Session length and break. Decided before the session, not during it.
• Stop rules. What makes a session end early, agreed while everyone is calm.
• What counts as finished. A set of questions done, or a block of time. One or the other, not both.
• Review time. A fixed moment to look back at the week and change anything that is not working.
• What the parent agrees to. Review within a day and no hovering. The agreement goes both ways.

The agreement does not decide how much practice is right. For that question, read how many hours of exam preparation a week, which gives caps rather than targets, and how to build study blocks.

The agreement worksheet

Print this page (your browser's print option will do) or copy the table onto one sheet of A4. Fill in the left column with your child and the right column yourself. Leave a space blank if you have not agreed it yet.

My column	The parent's column
Days I choose from the ones my parent offered: ______________________	Days I can offer: ______________________
How long a session feels OK to me: ______________	The longest session I will ask for: ______________
My break, and what I do in it: ______________________	How I will make sure the break happens: ______________________
Stop rules I think are fair. I can stop when I am: ☐ tired or upset ☐ stuck on two questions in a row ☐ ______________	Stop rules I agree to. I will not push on when: ☐ my child is tired or upset ☐ they are stuck on two questions in a row ☐ ______________
What counts as finished for me: ______________________	What counts as finished for me: ______________________
When we look back at the week: ______________________	When we look back at the week: ______________________
What I will do: turn up at the time we agreed. If I can't, I'll say so before the session.	What I will do: go through the work within a day, and not hover while my child is working.
Our own stop rule, in our own words: ______________________	Anything I want to add: ______________________
Child's signature and date: ______________________	Parent's signature and date: ______________________

Keep the sheet somewhere you both can see it. When a session goes wrong, point to the stop rule rather than arguing about the session.

What does a filled-in agreement look like?

This example is made up. "Mia" and her mum are not a real family, and every number below is that family's own choice, not a recommendation for yours.

Mia is in Year 5 and is preparing for a selective test. Her mum offered four days and Mia chose three.

Item	Mia's column	Mia's mum's column
Days	Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday	Offered Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday
Session length	20 minutes feels doable	Will not ask for more than 25 minutes
Break	5 minutes, outside with the dog	Sets a timer so the break is not skipped
Stop rules	Can stop when tired or upset, or after two stuck questions in a row	Agrees; will not say "just one more"
Finished	Finishes the set of questions or 20 minutes, whichever comes first	Same
Review	Sunday morning, before breakfast is cleared	Sunday morning
Parent promises	—	Marks the work by the next evening, and sits in the next room, not beside her
Our own rule	If a session ends early, it does not get made up the next day	—

Her mum had hoped for four days. She left it at three because Mia had chosen them herself, and a plan the child owns is easier to keep than a bigger one she did not.

What stop rules are fair?

A stop rule is fair when a child can use it without it counting as failing, and when a parent can enforce it without feeling they have given in. Three to start from:

1. Tired or upset. If either of you can see the session is not going anywhere, stop.
2. Stuck on two questions in a row. Mark them, leave them, and ask the teacher or tutor, or look at them again on a different day.
3. The time or the set is finished. Finishing counts. Do not add a bonus question because there was time left.

Add your own at the bottom of the worksheet. Two things to leave out: a stop rule that only the parent can use, and any rule that links stopping to a reward or a penalty.

If the stop rule is used in most sessions, the plan needs changing. Look at it in the weekly review.

This page is not clinical advice. If your child's worry about the test seems out of proportion, see how to help a child with exam anxiety and speak to your child's school or GP.

How do we review it after one week?

Choose a time you both can stay calm, and keep it short. Three questions, each answered by the child first:

1. Which session went best, and what was different about it?
2. Which session was hardest, and which stop rule, if any, did we use?
3. What is one thing to change before next week? Change only one: a day, a length or a rule.

Then write the change on the worksheet and both initial it. If nothing needs to change, say so and keep going. If you are tracking what your child is actually getting right, the mock review planner turns one test into next week's practice.

What makes an agreement fail?

Four patterns we would watch for:

• Written by the parent alone. The child signs because they are told to. By the second week the rules belong to the parent, and the arguments return.
• Hours treated as a target. The number becomes the point, and a tired child sits through the full time rather than stopping. Treat any figure as a ceiling.
• No stop rule. Every difficult session becomes a negotiation, because there is nothing agreed to point to.
• A punishment clause. "If you stop early, no screen time" turns the stop rule into a trap, and children stop using it honestly.

For the wider list of things parents get wrong, read exam preparation: common parent mistakes.

What should we do next?

• Fill in the worksheet this week, keep it where you can both see it, and hold the review at the end of the first week.
• If you are still deciding what to practise, you can compare practice packs by exam and entry year and check the test count, access period and price before choosing. This is optional; the agreement works without any purchase.

Sources and review

About the method: this agreement is Braintree Coaching Australia's own routine for families, written from common patterns in parent questions. It is not a clinical tool and it does not come from any exam authority. It states no exam facts, and nothing here predicts a test result or placement.

About the example: "Mia", her mum and every number in the example are fictional and were written for this page.

Author: James Rush, content writer, Braintree Coaching Australia.

Review status: a named teacher review has not yet been recorded for this worksheet, and it has not yet been trialled with a family outside the team. If something is unclear, please tell us.

Last updated: 2026-10-15.