Year 10 Mocks

[year10mocks]

Hi, I’m a mum of a Year 10 student with mocks coming up and I’m trying to understand how important these exams really are. How closely do Year 10 mocks reflect the real GCSEs, and how much weight do schools place on the results (for sets, predicted grades, or future options)? I’d also like to know what level of revision is generally expected at this stage.

I’d really appreciate hearing how important these mocks turned out to be in your experience. Thank you

Year 10 mocks are important in that they show how well the student is doing, maybe highlight areas where they need to revise more or (even better) look more closely at their exam technique – are they answering the question in the way that the mark scheme requires?

They will reflect GCSEs in that (IME) the experience of taking the exam in the school hall, no phones, that sort of thing, mirrors the actual GCSE experience. At this stage only some of the curriculum is covered (maybe only one book in Eng lit for example) so the coverage of the exam will be limited. Exams may be shorter or there may be fewer.

In terms of sets, predicted grades and future options – I mean GCSE PGs are not really needed or used except by the student. Post-16 settings usually go on actual GCSE grades and if they are using PGs it will be from year 11 mocks. Schools IME don't tend to reset groups in the middle of the GCSE course.

All that said, Year 10 mocks are important – they are a good chance to experience a GSCE style of exam and work on exam technique. So I would hope a student would revise all they have done so far in KS4.

Most schools go to a lot of effort to make them as close to the real thing as possible.

so they are done in the hall/wherever the real ones are done. Clear pencil case etc. full exam rules. If students have access arrangements - prompt, reader, scribe, extra time, these are given.

the papers themselves will be either full gcse papers or slightly cut down versions.

yes they are expected to revise for them.

y10 mocks are pretty much used for predicted gcse grades,

Thankfully ours aren't until June/July so they have the summer to reflect on revision and what is required of them for the final year. I'd suggest they do some revision on key topics or anything they aren't very sure of but not go wild at this point. I remember getting a lot of C's and D's and being horrified then getting all A's an B's in the real thing (I didn't do revision), so I do think they are good for giving them a bit of a scare as I suspect they are marked harshly!

the papers themselves will be either full gcse papers or slightly cut down versions.

That's interesting @Octavia64 do you think that is subject dependent? In my subject (MFL) at this stage of year 10, we had typically covered about a quarter to a third of the curriculum in terms of topics, grammar, vocab. So we found it very challenging to set a year 10 mock. We basically had to take the questions from past papers on topics that we had covered. We might merge a couple of papers but overall the effect was somewhat artificial, with a lot of focus on on one or two topics. We would flag this to students obvs. The year 11 mocks were much more realistic IME.

Ah yes possibly,

I taught maths and we mostly used past papers and only really had to cut out a couple of questions.

English I know they didn’t set questions on the book they hadn’t done yet but between poetry and play and one book it was pretty reliable.

Science again so much of it is not just the gcse course but going back to ks3 that not too tricky to cut down past papers.

They will give the school and the student a good idea of what they know and don't need to revise and what they don't know and do need to revise. They will also be an indication of students who need access arrangements for the exams.

I think this is later in the year maybe? If the OP's DC has mocks now, assuming the GCSE curriculum was started in year 10 ie Sept 2025, then they will have done one text fully and perhaps started a second in English. I can't see how they could have covered poetry, Shakespeare and one novel in four months.

Agree that science and maths are probably easier to adapt.

Ah our year 10 mocks were end of year 10. So June. We didn’t do spring term exams.

We’ve done Inspector Calls already, and now going through Christmas Carol x

If you were to ask my son for a realistic answer as to how much he did for year 10 mocks (or any mocks for that matter) he would say he did the bear minimum. No revision as such in year 10 but always did homework.

I'm not sure he is the best example!

I’m a big advocate of not doing a huge amount of revision for mocks - to me they’re a sense check of what you don’t know and where you need to revise, but that’s hard in year ten when not a lot of the content has been covered and so lots won’t be included in the mock anyway.

Revision has only ever really been useful for me about 6 weeks out from the final exam, but I thrive in an exam environment and always have - so it does depend on the student (I got all A/A* at GCSE by revising the day before, and for A level just a few weeks before). But I did make sure I was learnt what I was told at the time (eg I’d “revise” or go over topics the week we learnt them so they would stick and I didn’t have to look at them again in detail
nearer to the exam).

I would recommend going as 'full on' for revision as you can in time available.
Treat them seriously. Do a revision timetable to practice fitting in all the subjects. Learn when their best revision time is (eg straight after school, or wait until 6pm, morning or afternoon at weekends) and how to build in breaks. The more you and they can learn how to revise and how to structure revision now, the more effective they will be when the real exams roll around.

Get the young person to make revision cards / mind maps, and use them. By doing this properly now there will be less work to do later (as resources will be prepared and the topic learned once already). Do this for any end of topic tests whether called tests, exams or mocks.

It is a bit weird they call them mocks when you are only 1/4 into the course, presumably there are also end of y10 'mocks' and January y11 'mocks' too.

I would beware of this advice. GCSEs are now almost entirely terminal exams with no coursework. There is much more to learn all at once now than under the old letter grade GCSEs and more exams to sit. Even those doing letter GCSEs just before reform when exams had moved to the end had coursework to get marks in the bag in advance.

If they started the GCSE course at the start of Year 10, any exam will be on a fairly limited section of the syllabus.

Of course the exams are useful in teaching revision and exam technique type skills, but I would not assume the results are indicative of future success (or lack thereof).

I think the modern trend to call any exams "mocks" is extremely unhelpful - I'd suggest these are really just mid year assessments.

My teens found them really useful for relating how well revision went, to how well the exams went. They got much better at working out how to spread revision across a lot of subjects, how to get a revision timetable / plan that worked for them. One found he worked better in 1 hour chunks of revision, the other with 40 minute chunks. I was sitting with them and holding their hands for the first set of mocks, helping them devise a revision plan that worked. Second time round they were much more adept and knew what worked. By the time it got to actual GCSEs they were great at knowing how to revise, how to keep themselves sane, when to do past papers, when to do flash cards, when to get someone to test you etc etc.
And the better they revised the stuff at mocks, the easier that stuff was next time around.