For many parents, the school interview is something that feels hardest to prepare for.

You can support your child to practise exam papers, memorise complex vocabulary, work on comprehension, creative writing and reasoning.

But an interview?

That’s a different sort of pressure. A pressure that even we, as adults, struggle with.

Suddenly, your child has to walk into a room, meet an adult, or adults, they don’t know and talk about themselves, their interests, their opinions and why they want to join a particular school - something they have almost certainly never experienced before.

What if they freeze? What if they say “I don’t know”? What if they mumble, ramble or accidentally make themselves sound like they’ve never had a thought in their life, and all that hard work goes to waste?

The good news is that school interviews are not about perfect answers.

They’re about showing the person behind the exam result.

We all know reading matters.

It helps children build vocabulary, follow stories, absorb sentence patterns and become stronger at comprehension.

But what about TV?

Historically, TV gets treated or perceived as the enemy of learning.

Too much screen time. Too much noise. Too much staring into the middle distance with anxiety attack-inducing music and sound-effects.

And yes, if a child is just sitting there for hours with no thought, no conversation and no engagement, it’s probably not doing much for their English, or communication skills.

But TV itself isn’t always the problem, it’s what happens around it.

Used properly, TV can be a brilliant prompt for creative writing, inference and storytelling.

“Have you checked it?”

“Yes...”

Every parent has had this conversation.

Your child finishes their homework, you ask whether they’ve checked it, they say they have, and then you glance at it and immediately spot three missing full stops, ten spelling mistakes and a sentence that appears to have wandered off halfway through and never come back.

So what’s going on? Are they being lazy?

No, not necessarily.

The truth is that most children are not naturally good at checking their own work. And there are a couple of very understandable reasons why.

If I had to give just one piece of creative writing advice that works at almost any age and ability level, it would be this:

Vary your sentence lengths.

That's it. Not fancy vocabulary. No complicated techniques.

Just change the length of your sentences.

It sounds almost too simple, but it makes an enormous difference.

When children struggle in English, it’s rarely because they lack ideas.

More often, it’s because those ideas are out of balance.

Success in English depends on proportion. On knowing how much of something to include, where to place it and how to blend it properly.

If you want your child to become a better writer, one of the most effective places to start is with speaking.

That might sound surprising.

But strong speaking and strong writing are deeply connected.

Creative writing is, by nature, subjective. So how do examiners mark it in an objective way? How can something as personal and imaginative as storytelling be measured with scores and checklists? It’s a challenge that often leaves both parents and children asking: “What exactly are they looking for?” or “What can make my story stand out over someone else’s?”

Supporting your child with creative writing can feel intimidating, especially if it’s not something you naturally enjoy yourself or feel you’re good at. There can be doubt over where to start or worry you won’t ‘do it right’.

The truth is, you don’t have to be a great writer to help your child become one.

Some of the most effective ways you can support your child have nothing to do with your own writing skills. It’s about encouragement, exposure to different ideas and building their confidence through practice.

In a world where ChatGPT can write poems in seconds and AI can paint portraits, many parents are asking us: Where does that leave human creativity, especially for our children?

Whether your child is in primary school just beginning to explore their imagination or in secondary school navigating more complex creative tasks, the question remains the same: how do we help them develop their unique voice in a world where technology can do so much?