Missing mock GCSE’s

[Inastatus]

My DD has missed a few mock GCSE’s this week due to illness. She has been talking to her friends who have all been talking to her about the exams and she thinks she will be taking the same paper when she goes back to school next week! I’m a bit surprised as I’d assumed the school would provide a different paper for anyone in this position as it’s not very fair otherwise. Does anyone know what the procedure is?

Oh my giddy aunt I give up - fat thumbs today! Best go back to marking papers!

"And no, I won’t be sending any Xmas cards to anyone. Merry bloody Christmas "

But here you just proved my point- you don't appreciate the hard work your DD's teachers have been putting in to their mocks. I tried to enlighten you but you took offence. I tried to tell you it isn't unfair when you said it was.

I am indeed a teacher but I work in an academically selective jndependent school so I have small classes, plenty of time to mark and plan, and most importantly grateful parents. Nothing like the hard working teachers in state schools who are so overworked and under appreciated it's ridiculous. Just always so shocked to see comments from parents who have no idea how hard their kids teachers work. You were a classic case, so I told you so.

But here you just proved my point- you don't appreciate the hard work your DD's teachers have been putting in to their mocks. I

I genuinely appreciate the hard work of all essential/key workers during covid times but will not be sending them all Christmas cards.

Thanks BalaamsAss and Overtherainbow for your support. I’m just going to ignore arsey knickers now as she seems to enjoy making up a whole back story about me and how totally unappreciative I am. I’m really not sure how she came to her completely wrong conclusions but still 🙄

Thank you for asking a reasonable question, based on responses practice vary from one school to the other.
Cleary if schools are giving the same papers over different sittings/dates it should be made clear that all candidates have to keep their mouth shut up until a clear point in time !
Discussions around exams content are endless, just look at the recent threads on ISEB, the comment about the immaturity of the OP's DC is not even fair !
Be kind !!!

Thanks @montlieu 😊

In my subject, there are 3 available papers, one of which was only released last month so there is no mark scheme yet available. For various reasons, we don't want to take the paper ourselves to derive a mark scheme because we would not necessarily pick up every thing that the exam board wants, allows or tells markers not to count. So for a mock to be as realistic as possible, we had a choice of 2 papers.

Had your DD been at my school, she would have sat the same exam as the others. Over the coming months, they will all complete the other paper for which there is a mark scheme, and once results day has passed for the November exams, we will also give them the 3rd exam for practice.

Unfortunately, due to the wholesale changes a few years ago, and the move away from January exams, we simply don't have the stockpile of old papers that we did prior to 2017. Yes, we can cobble things together from old specifications but mocks should be as close to the real thing as possible, hence using an old paper. I hope that this helps to explain matters.

Yes good post Malbecfan. Op you may be aware that the spec for most GCSEs changed for 2018, so the only past papers fully available to schools are 2018 and 2019.

Chances are they will do the second one for a post Christmas mock. In a normal year they might well have done it as a yr 10 mock. I hope you see the issue now. Maybe suggest to your dd that she ignores what she has been told or tries to forget it! Not easy I know.

@Malbecfan - Thanks for taking the time to explain it for me. I really had no idea, hence my question.

@clary - thanks also. Thankfully DD has only missed 3 mocks and hopefully the others won’t have gone into too much detail about them. In any case DD knows it’s not going to help her in the long run.

My school let the self isolating ones (half the year) take them at home but will be cautious about taking those marks at face value for CAGS. Anecdotally, some students stuck rigorously to exam conditions, even when having a panic attack, others copied the mark scheme word for word 🙄 and some parents did it with them 🙄. I feel for these students as they have not had the mock experience or have not been credited with their hard work. However, they sit mocks in feb/Mar too to practice the paper 2s.

Although to be fair, this year they will be given some advance notice of question topics so maybe your dd will have the most realistic preparation for mocks!