End of Y10 exams: how good a predictor of GCSE results?

I'm a maths teacher and it's common to see students make 2 grades progress from the end of year 10 to their GCSE result. Not all students take the year 10 exams very seriously, whereas they do tend to knuckle down in year 11. Also, there is more exam practice, intervention and revision sessions for year 11 to prepare them.

I do feel sorry for this new year 11 though, they didn't get to finish primary school and do their SATs, or even start secondary school in the normal way.

It sounds like it's quite a long time until parents' evening, could you contact the head of year for an update before then?

To add some of the mocks didn’t cover the whole syllabus so it’s difficult to replicate the real thing in year 10, but they are a good indicator of what can be achieved in year 11

My DD’s year 10 grades weren’t a million miles away, she got 8’s and 9’s in all, apart from economics where she got a 6. Though it was later upgraded to a 7 as another teacher had to remark them due to a problem with the economics teacher (he was later sacked, or chose to leave, not sure but he departed quite quickly at Easter). She got all 9’s (12 in total) in her actual GCSE’s, so obviously exceeded grades at mocks. She did an incredible amount of work at home in the 2yrs of GCSE’s.

There is also huge variability in what a mock is. DC did full GCSE science papers and teacher said expecting him to go up at least two grades (if he works hard) - some of syllabus not yet covered. Subject variability too. I feel like a language or maths is generally harder to go up in than humanities. Your DCs all smashed it. Congrats!!!

Updating also,

Year 10 mocks - 7,7,7,7,6,5,4,4,4.
real GCSEs - 9,9,9,9,8,8,8,6,6.

and 2 of the grade 4s from year 10 turned into 9s!

Updating with results now in:

DD got something like 987777665 in Y10 mocks and 999888877 in the real thing. The grade 5 in Y10 was in Maths, which she worked her socks off to turn into a solid 8 as it turned out.

I got 4,3.4.3,2,4 around those horrible grades in my year 10 mocks I have just got my results a few days ago and have got ,6-8s I am very happy it depends what her grades are if they are above 5 I don't think she can get any worse as your learning it usually goes up from there as there are at least 3 mocks papers in year 11 my friends got 7s and 9s in their y10 mocks and got the same thing in the real thing .

My DS got 876665544 at end of Yr 10 mocks.
They then did 2 sets of mocks in year 11.
Has just got 977766654 in the real things.

DC just did 1 GCSE a year early. He was up 4 grades on year 9 mock, down one grade from mock earlier that year. Other friends were anything from up 2 grades to down 2. I don’t think mocks can be relied upon too closely,

There shouldn’t be twice as much content by Y11! My DD’s school had covered all specs by the time of their Y11 January mocks except for science paper 2s, in which they had covered the curriculum in time for February mocks. A lot of Y11 is about revision.

OP: well done to your DD. You may well find that her predictions will be about a grade up from Y10 mocks. Good luck to her for the coming year - DD’s just finished GCSEs.

That’s not necessarily true. My DD has just sat 3 full maths papers which were from 2023. Full papers. They haven’t covered all the work yet (obviously), but they want to see where they are at. Same for her dance and food tech exams.

Mocks taken at the end of y10 will only be set on work they have covered at that point.By the end of y11 there will be nearly twice as much content to be tested on!

Yeah he uses a range of methods. He has boxes of flash cards which he's written and referred back to, past papers, bitesize.

His mocks were past papers so included some topics they've not yet covered (eg they've not looked at Unseen Poetry but had a paper on that) so I have some hope that the grade can improve

You need to look at how he is revising - is he just reading or is he doing active revision?

So watching you tube videos for science for example, doing flash cards and testing himself. Blurting. Using a variety of methods and learning styles.

It's quality not quantity in a lot of cases.

I believe the y10 mocks in my daughter's school are the y11 papers from the year before which are locked until then.

My daughters predictions as at apr y11 were pretty much the same as after her y10 mocks.

I think she jumped a grade in a couple of papers.

Teachers have access to the most recent GCSE papers which are not available to everyone, so these ones are often used for a mock exam.

Often teachers will create their own paper tho - especially in year 10 when, as pps have indicated, not all GCSE work will shave been covered.

Just wonder when those GCSE past paper can be found online easily, it is very normal for a student to get familar with 1 to 2 years recent years past paper and take the mock exam.
Why the teacher just copy and paste the whole piece and doesn't make a new one on his/her own?

It varies hugely. My DD got mainly grade 5- 7 for her end of year 10 exams. She’s just sat her GCSEs and is likely to get mainly grade 8s. She has worked very hard this year, which she didn’t last year.

@BoogieBoogieWoogie I would be looking at how he is revising. "Worked hard" is vague - I'm not saying he didn't, but was it targeted? If he just spends time with his books reading it might not be valuable.

Lots of threads on this board about how oto revise, but one good tip I recall is plan a subject and a section - so not (vague) "history" but specific "causes of first World War" (just a random example).

It's worth you looking at it together over the summer IMHO.

Her report should indicate predicted grades based off these grades. It really depends on how they were marked, so you won't be able to tell based off just the grades alone.

My Y10 child has had her results back and they're a range of 6/7 - 9, which is to be expected for them, and next week we'll have a detailed report with predicted grades and expectations etc.

My DS is just getting his mock results back and they are lower than we expected/predicted grades. He worked hard in the run up too, so both he and we are disappointed. Parents eve has been and gone for this year but his teachers had all said that a tutor would be wasted money, so not sure what else we can do other than gently encourage and hope that he naturally gains and extra grade or 2
(we're seeing 5's rather than the 6-7's we were expecting)

It also depends on what the test was. If it was an actual GCSE paper, then the mark is obviously indicative of how they might perform in the real thing. If it was more a collection of questions cobbled together it might have been unrepresentative. They will also not have covered the whole syllabus in Year 10 and in some subjects (particularly maths) it will be the harder sections still to do.

I'd also caveat that no one knows what actual grade boundaries look like until after GCSEs so even if your DC is graded as a 6 (say) on a past paper, doesn't mean that this would have been a 6 in the year she takes it.

To add a parent view - my DD did better than expected in year 10. Probably simplified exams etc, and she just did GCSE so we don't know hwr actual results yet.
But doing well really boosted her confidence and helped her believe she could do well. She has been more engaged - happier to ask a teacher to go over something, worked hard for her mocks etc. Hopefully that plays out in results...!

So I agree year 10 exams are not a prediction of GCSE, but your DD can use this good result to spur her into and through year 11 🙂

Yeh it depends on so much. So if (example from my subject) they did a full GCSE French paper and it was marked to the scheme, against the GB of that year, and she got a 7 - then yes, very well done, good chance of the same or better in year 11.

But if (as is frankly more likely) it was a simpler version, using some GCSE questions but omitting topics not covered yet and maybe not including the longer written task or both translations (for example) then it is less convincing.

For Eng lit, they won’t have covered all the texts so it will have been a simplified exam. And so on.