GCSE study advice. When to start past papers.

[sociableintrovert123]

My DS is 15 and is about to start studying for his national 5 exams which are the Scottish equivalent of GCSEs. His first exam is 22nd April. We are having a bit of a ‘discussion’ on the best time to start past papers. He’s already done some in class and while studying for his mocks. However I think it would be good to do lots of past papers at the start of his studying to know where his weak areas are. DS meanwhile thinks he should do all his studying for weeks and weeks the do the past papers in the last couple of weeks before the exam.
We have parents evening this week so I can ask the teachers at this point. However I wondered if any experienced parents or teachers could advise here.

Anyone? Thanks

Now if not already started. Have the mark scheme to hand too.

Dtds are taking exams in June 2027 and I’ve said they need to start at Easter to get used to the question style - they’ve been doing them in school since day one of year 10. So I guess my answer is now.

Thanks. He has done some past papers during revision for his mocks and the teachers have given them ‘questions’ he tells me which I presume are taken from past papers. It’s not easy getting information out of him and I’m trying to keep the stress levels low which isn’t easy!

However I think it would be good to do lots of past papers at the start of his studying to know where his weak areas are

He should do a past paper, identify where his weak areas are from that paper, work on those weak areas and then do another paper to find out more weak areas and repeat. Or realise that he needs to do some more work on other areas from e.g. lessons or short mixed practice. No point in doing a bunch of papers all at once right now, he'll just burn through them when he needs to save some for the end.

Doing occasional past papers is good, to calibrate how well your revision is going and where your weaknesses are. Doing lots of them one after another is not necessarily helpful, especially as they are doing papers/questions in class, and it uses up revision time. I would focus more on regular revision than doing lots of past papers. If there are particular types of question he tends to score badly on, he could mainly focus on those, rather than doing whole papers.

Thanks everyone. The replies have been helpful. First time doing exams here and I have completely forgot how I studied years ago!

I did so many A level past papers in maths (probably 5+ years of papers including the November sitting papers) that 5/6 of the 11 questions that came up in the exam for pure maths had been in the previous years' exams. Hence I did very well in it!
Nat 4/5 haven't been around for too long so not sure how many old papers there are but now is not too soon to start!

Papers throughout the study - avoids panics and add variety to the revision ( makes it less boring overall )

I sat my GCSE maths last year (at the grand old age of 49!). I did every past paper I could find from January until I sat the exams in May and June (3 papers per year going back to 2017) and most of of those I did three times (!) - and I found when it came to the exam I was SO used to the way they were asking the questions I knew exactly what they were asking and thus how to answer them. I’d say do as many as possible just for your son to learn where he needs to focus his revision on and get used to the styles of questioning.

Thanks for the replies. Very helpful.