Do Mocks test real exams?

[Shiningbrightandhigh]

I have started doing practice maths papers with DC who is in year 11. They were quite surprised who long it was.

That got me worried that they have had mocks and have been working with a tutor and have not seen a real GCSE exam until I showed it. What are they doing?

We are in Wales so things are a little different, especially for the current year 11 because some subjects have a new syllabus.
We had mocks in Feb of year 10 ( the week after the year 11 had theirs). They were set up to be as near as possible as the actual exams, so that when the actual exams came, they knew what to expect. I think in most, they were allowed the same (or a very similar) length of time.

They sat the first of three maths papers, the first of three English papers, and one paper for each science in the summer exam season. ( whilst the results came out with the rest of the gcses in August, the marks will be added to the later papers to get the final marks).
The second maths and English papers are this week.
The third maths and English papers are next summer, with all the other exams. Mocks are early next year,

I think with all the information available, the nature of the papers shouldn't be a surprise to children.

Like PPs have said,'official' mocks around Jan are usually a past paper. My DS then practised lots of Qs for each subject, in exam conditions.

You do have to be careful though... a teacher at my DS's school used to compile the 'mock' by picking and choosing different Qs and writing some of their own, then the results for their subject ended up being a bit shit.

You've probably discovered it, but www.revisionworld.com has lots of great resources, including the rubrics used to grade. English in particular is worth a look; I found the difference in example answers for level 6 and level 5 pretty subtle.