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In the world of exam influencing, you’re only as good as your last prediction. And earlier this year some of the UK’s biggest educational content creators made, in the eyes of their audiences, bad ones.

At the beginning of May, students sitting their English exams found that predictions made by prominent online teachers on their channels were not entirely correct. Disgruntled students immediately flooded social media to express their discontent.

One panicked teenager contacted one content provider, who has 258,000 YouTube followers, directly, fearing a misstep had left them destined to be “working in McDonald’s” for the rest of their life.

Meanwhile, the r/GCSE Reddit forum erupted with direct attacks on other exam influencers’ content.

Students slammed one influencer, who has 208,000 followers on YouTube, digging up a thread from two years ago to place him on “fraud watch” and venting, “BOTH questions were wrong... I want this man to be no more.”

While incorrect prediction videos are often taken down once students have sat the papers, creators are quick to defend their content. In later videos, their defence often centres around lashing out at critics “who don’t know what the word prediction means” or arguing that students simply cannot revise the entire curriculum on their own.

When predictions of exam questions go wrong

Despite the controversies, exam influencers are everywhere on social media. Many have been praised by both students and teachers for getting teens engaged with their exams and providing free assistance.

But there are plenty of high-profile cases of that advice being bad, too. And there are plenty of concerns that, instead of helping, these influencers are causing more trouble than they are worth.

So, how did these accounts get to be so popular? And should teachers be encouraging students towards exam content providers or warning them away?

Exams are stressful, so it’s little surprise that worried students often turn to online resources as a way to speed up or simplify revision.

Before the Covid-19 pandemic prompted a surge in social media use, students already relied on online forums, exam-board past papers and YouTube tutorials for revision support, although this was, by and large, far less commercialised.

Now social media influencers represent a large proportion of online revision resources, providing seemingly helpful information via platforms like YouTube, Instagram and TikTok.

And the content they share is hugely popular. According to a from earlier this year, 74 per cent of students have turned to online content creators for academic advice. Worryingly for schools, 14 per cent of students say they trust influencers more than their teachers.

While the type of short, snappy content shared by influencers offers a visual and engaging way of learning that may suit some students, there are plenty of drawbacks that young people may not be aware of.

Science with Hazel, a prominent influencer on TikTok and YouTube, acknowledges the dangers of relying on revision content posted on social media, stating that the “fundamental issue is a lack of quality control”.

She has a background in education, being a qualified secondary science teacher and a University of Cambridge graduate, with a long history of producing revision content. When she started her YouTube channel over 10 years ago, she was “one of a very small handful of online educators specialising in GCSE/IGCSE and A-level content”.

However, she points out that “social media requires no credentials, qualifications or proof of experience, yet the algorithms heavily reward content that capitalises on panic”.

‘Exploitation’ of anxious students

The circulation of “predicted papers” is seen by many as particularly troubling.

Pepe Di’Iasio, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, urges students to be cautious about what they see on social media, and particularly wary of people providing predicted papers.

“These sources will insist that their model for predicting questions has a high rate of accuracy, but the obvious risk is that different questions come up for which students aren’t prepared,” he explains.

“We’d very much like to see action taken to police [this], and would be happy to discuss with the government, regulators and exam boards about what options are available.”

However, Science with Hazel argues that the issue is not predicted papers themselves - since similar resources are also sold widely by commercial education sites - but how they are presented to anxious students.

In her view, content becomes exploitative when advice is marketed as a shortcut or guarantee to securing top grades.

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If predictions are clearly caveated as an additional form of unseen exam practice, based on careful analysis of the specification, they can be a legitimate revision tool, she argues.

These sentiments resonate with Ofqual’s stance on the issue.

“We know many students use online content for support, and there’s helpful material out there. We’d always encourage students to check what they find against official sources, as not everything online is accurate,” an Ofqual spokesperson told ����Vlog.

Science with Hazel acknowledges that the education space online has “changed beyond recognition” in recent years, and suggests that the loudest voices “aren’t always the most qualified”.

A possible solution, she adds, is for schools to “support the qualified educators who are doing the heavy lifting online” and to “shift the online narrative away from ‘hacks and quick fixes’ and back toward sustained, specification-mapped hard work”.

Her views are echoed by other education influencers, who say it is important to establish credibility through professional experience and transparency.

Primrose Kitten, another influential presence across TikTok and YouTube, stresses the importance of teachers helping students to distinguish between channels run by people with an education background and those without.

She emphasises that everyone who works for her channel is a former teacher and still considers themself to be a teacher, first and foremost.

In line with this, she perceives her role as a “supplement to classroom learning”, aiming to “build a student’s confidence and exam technique rather than offering a magic fix”.

Finding trustworthy resources online

The difficulty for students is how to determine whether a source is reliable or not.

Ofqual advises that students “should go to trusted sources for information and advice”, adding that accurate, up-to-date guidance on qualifications and exams is available on its website and the websites of individual exam boards.

Ultimately, an Ofqual spokesperson says, “students should always talk to their teachers, who are best placed to help them through their studies”.

Rory Harris, head of English at Queen Elizabeth’s Hospital, an independent boys’ school in Bristol, says he “occasionally directs students to a teacher’s channel as an alternative interpretation”, while stressing how it is important to “take all resources online with a pinch of salt”.

He believes his students are “aware of the limitations of content and social media”, yet he acknowledges this may not be true across all subjects or schools.

Indeed, findings from Teacher Tapp suggest that, for many teachers, online misinformation is already a significant classroom issue.

In a , 74 per cent of secondary teachers said they have had to correct misconceptions their students had picked up from what they had encountered online. Humanities and English teachers were the most likely to report having to correct misconceptions.

The Department for Education says its updated curriculum (expected in spring 2027) will ensure that “every child learns to identify mis- and disinformation from an early age, as well as gaining skills in media literacy at secondary school”.

More widely, the DfE is “taking action to make sure children use screens safely,” a spokesperson said, through its recently published early-years screentime guidance and ongoing work to develop similar guidance for parents of 5- to 16-year-olds.

The high-stakes nature of our exams

However, the popularity of exam influencers also raises questions about our exam system.

Di’Iasio points out that we should be asking why students feel they must take “such desperate measures” in turning to unregulated advice online.

He believes the trend “is obviously connected to the extremely high-stakes nature of GCSEs and A levels, which places huge pressure on young people”, and that rather than just looking to improve students’ digital literacy, we should also be seeking “ways of reducing the stress and anxiety associated with these exams”.

According to , 85 per cent of students experience exam anxiety, and yet 71 per cent do not seek any support to help manage this.

The government’s decision to scrap the English Baccalaureate, alongside reforms aimed at reducing the number of GCSE exams, arguably reflects these wider concerns about student anxiety and stress.

However, the NEU teaching union argues that these changes do not go far enough, describing England’s assessment system as and warning that the curriculum remains overloaded and unfit for the future.

Meanwhile, as policymakers debate systemic fixes, students are using social media to look for immediate escapes.

And as young people’s reliance on online revision content persists, for now schools are left to help them navigate the risks while making the most of the support it can offer.

Rufus Thomas is a freelance writer

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