How much do grades typically improve between mocks and GCSEs?

Both mine improved at least 2 grades in all subjects, eldest was a total surprise to the school (too quiet for her own good), younger was shocked by the low grades in mocks and was motivated to pull his finger out.
Funnily enough eldest was the same at A levels.

Yeh @winterrabbit what @TeenDivided says - and others too - the F paper is a lot easier so it is much more accessible and easier to gain a 4/5.

MFL is my subject not science; the MFL F paper is so so much easier. Anyone who was gaining a 4/5 at this stage in year 11 would be advised to take F. Presumably they are not planning an A level in the subject so an easier pass is the badger.

A student I know who is actually pretty smart took F French as he had no plans to take it further - he quite honestly said to me "I need to translate 'My uncle lives by the beach' into french - that's simple". I thought that was pragmatic and eminently sensible.

If he is un likely to get a 6, F where available is the way. Certificates don't say he did foundation btw just the grade.

French A level is great but what grade is he likely to gain? If below a 7 I wouldn;t advise it tbh.

Based on my two kids experience (one hardworking and one less so) I would say one grade is the usual improvement with work. Two grades improvement is unusual.

At my kids school you have to be academic to sit A level economics. Both my kids were interested, the one with a 9 in maths and 8s in triple science was accepted. The one with a couple of 7s, lots of 6s and a couple of 5s was not and did Business instead.

He may need to think again about the Economics. It's really challenging for someone working around 5 in GCSEs.

Foundation paper has less content to revise (and it is the 'harder' bits of each topic that genuinely get dropped, I compared the revision guides) and the questions are a bit more straightforward imo.
The grades on higher go U,3,4,5,6,7,8,9 whereas on Foundation go U,1,2,3,4,5.
Unless you honestly think he stands the chance of a 6 then Foundation may be better. I'd be guided by the teacher unless your DS knuckles down.

A 3 is a 'level 1 pass', a U isn't. But yes, neither are a Level 2 pass. Doesn't make much odds unless you are scrabbling around for grades in which case having 3s gets you onto Level 2 courses whereas Us won't.

4s/5s at GCSE is really old Cs and your DS may be better off doing T-level/BTEC rather than A levels both from ability and work ethic if that is all he achieves in the real things cross the board. It is better to look at Plan B and Plan C now than be bounced into an ill thought out choice at the end of August if higher grades aren't achieved. You can still go to uni with T-Levels/BTECs.

I agree with this. I wouldn't say it about ALL subjects, but science is bloody hard at A Level, and if he needs to work so hard at GCSE he will find it impossible, particularly if, as it seems, he's not inclined towards independent study.

Dd (and everyone else graded dropped too) got 4 and 5 in physics and chemistry in her mocks (she excels at English/ humanities/ languages) - we got a shit hot super expensive tutor and she worked really hard and got 88 in the real exams.

Although you can only get a maximum of a 5 on a Foundation paper, that paper is generally easier than trying to achieve a 5 in the higher paper. DS was on the cusp for Spanish, and was entered for Foundation - he absolutely smashed his 5 very easily (needed 165 to get a 5 and he got 173).

What does he want to do?

At my school that is what we focus on, what does he want to do next?

If he needs a science grade (ie teaching) then do the lower paper, I have had students capable of getting 6s do the lower paper because it takes the stress/workload off.

They won’t have finished the specification yet. Maybe the teacher knows the remaining topics are harder, or believes based on teaching him that your DS won’t do well in them. That will mean he could get a lower mark(and therefore grade) in the actual exam, so foundation makes sense. It’s always better to have a grade than a U, even if it’s not a higher grade.
In addition, the way papers are structured (getting harder as you go) might mean your DS would do better on a foundation paper where he found the start easy and built his confidence - a higher paper would start with stuff he already finds tricky.

Edit: 3 isn’t a fail. It’s a lower grade pass. It won’t allow access to A level or be counted in number of higher grade passes for eg University applications, but it isn’t a fail.

If he isn't going to get higher than a 5 he may as well do the foundation paper.
What A Level subjects is he hoping to take?

You can still get Grade 1, 2 or 3 on a higher paper.

Grade 5

DD revised hard and often. Got great results in mocks and exactly the same in the real gcses, with the exception of one subject when she dropped a grade.

It depends on how much he plans on revising for the real exams. DS thinks it's a waste of time doing too much revision for mocks but revised a lot for the real GCSEs because he wanted to get back in his sixth form so he revised from Easter till the exams for most subjects.

He ended going up 2 grades in a few subjects and 1 in others. He had to get a 6/7 in one English subject so he picked the one he liked most and went to school support and watched YouTube videos and got an 8. He didn't do much in the other and got a 6.

He's using the same tactics for A-levels so didn't bother revising much for assessments till the end of 1st year exams but needed high predicted grades for his Uni course so worked really hard and did well. It's a bit of a stressful approach for us as parents but seems to work for him.... so far!

Realistically, if he got 4,5,5 in the sciences, he shouldn't be contemplating doing sciences at A level. They're far too low, and even if he does a lot of revision and turns them into 6s or maybe the odd 7, it's still too low and far below A level standard. A level sciences are a massive step up from GCSE and you really should be getting 8 or 9 at GCSE to take that subject at A level. I remember seeing some tables showing a GCSE 9 equated to A level grade A, 8 = B, 7=C, and Unis will typically only offer places on A level grades A and B, especially for STEM degrees, so a D or below at A level will really limit Uni choices.

Dc's grades all fell by one mark from mocks to actual GCSEs. I've heard this happen a lot, and they worked very hard too. Grades can go down.

My sons History GCSE was his biggest nice shock- went from a 2 on the mock to a 6!!! A jump of 4 grades! He actually thought he had someone else's results as he didn't believe the history mark! He just knuckled down revising as wasn't happy with his 2 and got that result! I know this doesn't happen in all subjects and for all pupils.

In my school predicted grades were set by the formula

Mock grade plus two thirds of a grade and then if you were close enough to the boundary for the next grade that's what you'd get.

So say they got 43 marks in the mock and the grade boundaries were 40 - 4, 50 - 5 and 60 - 6

A grade us 10 marks, two thirds of a grade us 7 marks (generous)

So 43 plus 7 gives 50 predicted if a 5.

On average a grade improvement

However that average hides a lot of variability.

I usually taught the grade 1/2/3 class and they would usually improve by about half a grade.

The kids who were motivated and whose parents got tutors would improve more than a grade.

At the upper level 7/8/9 it's much more about what comes up on the exam and in particular the boundary between 8 and 9 it very easy to move across in both directions.

Kids getting grade 3 or 4in the mocks are usually targeted by the school and get lots of small group intervention and smaller classes and extra homework clubs etc. the school really does try very hard to drag them over the line.

In this household, 1 grade improvement if they don't put any effort in and just plod through the last school lessons. I am still annoyed with DS.