By Cyril KimbiParents of concours candidates usually want to help and are not sure how. The instinct is to add pressure, buy more books, or ask more often how revision is going. All three are common, and all three tend to make things worse. What actually helps is quieter and more practical.
Understand the selection first
This changes how a parent responds to everything else, so it is worth being precise about it.
A concours is not an examination with a pass mark. There is a fixed number of places, candidates are ranked, and the line falls where the places run out. If there are 100 places and 3,000 candidates, 2,900 do not enter — including many who answered well.
The practical consequence for a parent: not placing is not evidence that your child did not work. Reacting as though it were does real damage, and it is the most common mistake made in September. The question worth asking afterwards is where they ranked and why, not why they failed.
What actually helps
Protect the time
The most valuable thing most parents can give is uninterrupted blocks. That means household tasks scheduled around study hours rather than into them, visitors managed, and younger siblings kept out of the room for a defined period.
Two hours genuinely uninterrupted is worth more than five hours interrupted every twenty minutes, because concentration takes time to rebuild after each break.
Handle the paperwork
Concours files require documents that take weeks to obtain: a recent birth certificate, certified copies, medical certificates, photographs, payment receipts. Chasing these is genuinely hard for a seventeen-year-old and entirely manageable for an adult.
Do it early. Get copies certified before registration opens rather than during it, when every office in the country has a queue. A file rejected for a missing document is the most avoidable failure in the whole process.
Ask better questions
“Have you been studying?” invites a defensive yes and tells you nothing. It also communicates suspicion, which is not what you meant.
Better: “Which paper are you least confident about?” or “What did you score on the last timed paper?” These are answerable, they are about the work rather than about character, and they surface a real problem while there is still time to fix it.
Provide the conditions, not the content
Light, a table, a chair, quiet, and enough food. These sound trivial and are not — a candidate revising on a bed in a dark room at eleven at night is losing hours to the setup.
Sleep matters more than most parents believe. Memory consolidates during sleep, so a candidate studying until two in the morning is undoing part of what they did that evening. Late-night revision looks like commitment and often is not.
What to avoid
- Comparing them to another child. It reliably reduces performance and damages the relationship.
- Adding a second full plan. Extra classes on top of a full timetable produce exhaustion, not marks. Ask what would be dropped before adding anything.
- Choosing the career for them. A candidate preparing for someone else’s ambition prepares badly, and the resentment surfaces later.
- Treating results day as a verdict on the family. The pressure this creates is felt long before the day itself.
- Relying on WhatsApp for dates and results. Information circulates ahead of announcements and is frequently wrong. Take dates from the institution.
Money, honestly
Concours preparation costs real money — files, travel to examination centres, sometimes accommodation — and families should plan the total rather than meeting each cost as it arrives.
One point worth knowing: much of what is sold as preparation is available free. Past papers and marking schemes are the core material, and the past questions library and concours guides cost nothing. Paid coaching can help a candidate who needs structure; it does not substitute for timed practice, which is free.
Be sceptical of anyone guaranteeing admission. Nobody can guarantee a ranked place, and offers to “arrange” one are either fraud or something worse.
Prepare the second route in advance
This is the most useful thing a parent can insist on, and the one most families skip.
Because places are capped, every plan needs an alternative prepared in the same cycle: a second concours whose papers overlap, and a faculty registration as security. The orientation calendar sets out when each has to happen — and several deadlines fall before results are published.
A candidate who waits for one result and then discovers registrations have closed loses a full year. That is an administrative failure, not an academic one, and it is entirely preventable by an adult with a calendar.
Frequently asked questions
How much should I be involved?
Heavily in logistics and paperwork; lightly in content. Ask about the work, not about effort.
Should I pay for extra classes?
Only if your child lacks structure rather than hours. Ask what would be dropped to make room before adding anything.
My child says they are fine but seems anxious. What do I do?
Ask about the work rather than the feeling — which paper, what score. It is easier to answer and usually surfaces the real problem.
What do I say if they do not place?
That places are capped and ranked, that many strong candidates do not place, and that the next step is a diagnosis rather than a verdict.
How do I check a date is real?
Only from the institution or ministry concerned. Dates circulating on messaging apps often precede the official announcement and are sometimes false.
