Missing mock GCSE’s

When I was teaching we'd use the same paper. Often schools use last year's exam papers which are not impossible to get hold of anyway.
My son and the rest of his year have just done most of their mocks from home, which makes the whole thing fairly pointless in my opinion.

There’s aren’t unlimited past papers to use; for one of my courses I literally have two! Writing a new paper takes ages, it’s one of the hardest things to do IMO, so yes, students who miss exams get the same paper.

Not angry, just shocked tbh. Your question shows absolutely no regard for the poor teachers who have to put together the exams and then mark them and somehow standardise your DD's result with the rest of the cohort. The fact that your DD is artificially inflating her score by finding out what is in the exam is one thing but the disregard for how hard teachers have been working this term is what shocked me. You mention unfair but doing anything but giving her the tests would be unfair.

There is a slight issue this year, that if the government do a U-turn (and anything is possible), then schools will have to do CAGs like last year. Knowing about topics or whatever in advance might mean she will do better than she should in the mocks, leading to unfair ranking. Though presumably school will try to take this into account.

DD missed all the first mocks. I'm hoping that she might be able to somehow sit the missed papers at some point under controlled conditions, for the practice if nothing else.

tbh Your DD was a bit immature talking to her friends about the exam contents... (but not all 15/16yos are mature, so can be forgiven.)

DS missed his computing mock by 2 weeks due to self isolating. The school had him sit an alternate paper.
OP I don’t think it’s unreasonable to ask. It sounds like not all schools are the same.

Ridiculous that you think your DD should have a separate paper. Also foolish of her friends to share what is in the exam. Of course her papers will be the same. They are usually the most recent public exam, these are the only questions that are usually safe from having been shared online and the best way of getting up to date realistic questions. Your DD's grades will not be indicative of what she was really capable of getting so be aware she may not do so well in the real exams

A different paper would be a pain to supply (because they'd need to keep another one reserved for mock use), a pain to mark (because it's quicker marking lots the same), difficult to calibrate against the others (because it will have different questions, and may have more/less on the bits they haven't yet covered fully). It's usually simpler to stick to the same paper and hope that the kids are keen enough to have a proper dry-run that they don't let their friends tell them about it, or just be conscious that they may have performed a little better than might be expected.

Yep - in my school we give out the same paper. For junior school it doesn’t matter so much (I’ve been supervising mop-up exams all week) but for exam years it’s a more risky proposition. The reality is that staff can’t make an unlimited amount of papers. Not everyone who has to do mop-ups will do them on the same day so you could potentially have to produce numerous papers. We know that those who have missed are likely to be at an advantage due to knowing questions in advance but there really isn’t another option

*paper

We give the same exam pape