5 min read · Updated 2026-10-18
In short
Ask every family to add their child's school exams and assessment tasks as soon as the school announces them, with a photo of the notice. Then put those dates in front of the tutor on the lesson page and the tutor's calendar, so each lesson in the weeks before a task is planned around it.
A Year 10 student walks into Tuesday's lesson and mentions, almost in passing, that the science research task is due on Thursday. The tutor had planned quadratics. The parent, who paid for the term so this would not happen, hears about it on the drive home. Nobody did anything wrong: the school sent a notice, it went into a bag, and the date never reached the one person who could have planned for it.
Each school sets its own assessment schedule, so two students in the same year at your centre can have entirely different weeks of pressure. A centre that knows those dates can turn a panic into a plan. A centre that does not is always finding out on the day.
Who knows the date first
The student hears about a task in class, and the parent sees the notice when it comes home or lands in the school's app. Your tutor is usually last. So the job is not to find the dates yourself; it is to make it effortless for the family to pass them on, and to make sure the date then reaches every tutor who teaches that child, not just the one who happened to be told.
- Ask at enrolment: which school, which year, and when the school usually sends its assessment schedule
- Ask again in week one of every term, when most schedules come out
- Ask for the notice itself, not just the date: the task, the weighting and what is allowed in the exam all change how a tutor prepares
- Let the student add dates too: older students often know before their parents do
- Never charge for it: a family who has to upgrade to tell you an exam date will not bother
In XTutio the exam dates list is free for every family, on the student's and the parent's pages alike. The student, a parent, a tutor who teaches them or centre staff can add an exam, and the parent can attach the notice as a photo or a PDF so the tutor can read it. A tutor can change an exam and delete only the ones they added, so a date a family entered is never quietly removed.
Put the date where the tutor already looks
A date in a spreadsheet at reception is a date nobody reads. The tutor needs it in the two places they look before every lesson: their own calendar, and the page for the lesson they are about to teach. A good rule is an eight week window, which is long enough to plan a run of lessons towards a task and short enough not to bury this week's work.
This is what XTutio does. An exam a family adds appears on the student's calendar, the parent's family calendar and the calendar of every tutor who teaches that child, whatever else is on screen. The staff lesson page shows a "Coming up" panel with each rostered child's exams in the next eight weeks, the notes, and the family's attached notice, visible only to the tutor delivering or covering the lesson and staff with access to lessons. A tutor can add an exam from there too, when a student mentions one mid-lesson.
- Notice comes home
The school announces a task or exam and its date.
- Family adds it
A parent or the student adds the exam and attaches the notice.
- Every tutor sees it
It appears on the calendar of each tutor who teaches the child.
- Coming up
In the eight weeks before, it shows on every lesson page for that child.
- Plan backwards
The tutor shapes the lessons before the task around it.
Planning backwards from a task
Once the date is on the lesson page, the planning is ordinary good teaching. Count the lessons left before the task. Spend the first on what the task actually asks, using the notice. Put practice under exam conditions in the second last, and keep the last one for questions and confidence, not new content. For a student with several tasks in the same fortnight, talk to the family early about which matters most.
- Read the notice: format, weighting, what is allowed in the room
- Count the lessons between today and the task
- Agree with the student which topics the task covers
- Set homework that builds towards the task, due at the next lesson
- Run one practice under timed conditions before the date
- Afterwards, ask how it went and note it for the family
The wrap-up after each of those lessons is where the parent sees the plan working. Our article on lesson wrap-ups and parent updates covers what to write, and our article on planning around the NSW school year covers the term dates and state-wide exams around which these school tasks sit.
When the term gets busy
Many schools put assessment blocks in the same weeks, so a centre with a hundred students can see dozens of tasks land together. That is the week tutors ask for extra lessons, families ask to swap times, and reception needs to know why. If the dates are already on every child's record, those requests stop being a surprise. A tutor whose students all have English essays due in week eight can plan the whole fortnight in advance, and the front desk can offer extra sessions before families ask.
Exam dates in XTutio work alongside the rest of the scheduling: the same calendars families and tutors already use for lessons and homework, with each child in a colour of their own on the family's view.
Questions centres ask
- How do tutoring centres find out about students' school exams?
- Mostly from the family. Ask at enrolment and again at the start of every term, and make it easy for a parent or student to add the date and a photo of the school's notice.
- Do families pay to add exam dates in XTutio?
- No. The exam dates list is free for every family, whatever their plan. Only separate trial papers and exam preparation are offered as upgrades, and never on a child's screen.
- Who can see an exam a family adds?
- The student, their parents, the tutors who teach them and centre staff. On a lesson page, the exams and the attached notice show only to the tutor delivering or covering that lesson and staff with access to lessons.
