Gaps that keep showing up in one or two subjects are usually where one-to-one help makes the clearest difference. Our GCSE tutors work from the marked mock papers rather than the syllabus, so each session goes on the marks your child actually lost.
Mock exams tend to arrive in Year 11 with a letter home, a revision timetable and a fair amount of worry. The short answer to the question most parents ask is reassuring. GCSE mock exams are practice exams set and marked by your child's school, and they do not count towards the final grade.
They are not meaningless, though. Schools use mock results to make real decisions in the months that follow, from the predicted grades on sixth form applications to the tier a student sits in maths and science.
Here is what mocks are for, when they usually happen, what the results feed into, and what to do if they go badly.
Mocks are GCSE papers sat in exam conditions before the real thing. Schools usually run them in the exam hall, with invigilators, seating plans and the same timings as the summer.
Some schools call them PPEs, short for pre-public examinations. They are the same thing.
Teachers usually set past papers from the relevant exam board and mark them against the board's mark scheme. They then turn the marks into grades using boundaries from a previous year. That last detail matters more than it sounds, and we come back to it below.
If your child cannot find last summer's paper online, that is deliberate. Exam boards hold their most recent papers back for teachers so that schools can use them as unseen mocks.
Pearson keeps its papers restricted to teachers for the first twelve months after each series for this reason. AQA's summer 2026 papers do not reach its public website until July 2027.
There is no national date. Every school sets its own timetable, so two friends at different schools can sit their mocks weeks apart.
There is a common pattern, though. Ofqual and the Department for Education ask schools to make sure students sit at least one set of mocks in exam conditions, and to keep the papers. That gives schools evidence to fall back on if exams were ever cancelled.
Schools are advised to complete this in the first half of the academic year where possible. That is one reason so many Year 11 mocks fall between November and January.
Some schools then run a second round in February or March. Year 10 mocks, where a school runs them, usually come at the end of the year in the summer term, although some schools hold them earlier.
The quickest way to find your child's dates is the school calendar, the letter or email home, or a message to the school's exams officer.
Mocks also sit just ahead of several fixed deadlines in the GCSE year. These are the key dates JCQ has published for summer 2027 in England.
No. GCSE grades come from the exams sat in the summer, plus non-exam assessment in the subjects that have it. Ofqual is clear that the grade reflects the quality of the work in those assessments.
There is one exception, and it is rare. If the government decided that exams could not go ahead, grades would be based on evidence schools already hold, and mock exams sat in exam conditions would be a key part of it. That is why schools are asked to keep the papers.
It does not apply to a student who is ill on the day of a real exam. That situation is handled through a separate process called special consideration, which works from the papers the student was able to sit. Mock grades are not used to fill the gap.
So the more useful question is what mock results feed into. It varies between schools, but these are the usual ones.
Tier entry deserves a proper conversation rather than a line on a report. Foundation papers award grades 1 to 5, so a student entered for Foundation cannot achieve higher than a 5. Higher papers award grades 4 to 9.
A student who sits Higher and falls just short of a 4 is given an allowed grade 3, and below that the result is unclassified. Schools must submit entries, including tiers, by 21 February 2027, and exam boards allow changes for a limited period after that. If you are not sure which tier your child has been entered for, it is worth asking now.
Access arrangements are the other decision worth checking now. JCQ's rules say an arrangement must reflect the support a student normally receives, and they name internal tests and mock exams as part of that picture. For 25% extra time, schools are expected to show it being used in internal tests and mock papers.
Where a student has extra time, a reader or supervised rest breaks, check that these were in place during the mocks. Our guide to getting extra time in exams explains the process and the evidence schools need.
A mock grade is a snapshot, taken months early, under conditions that are close to the real thing but not quite the same.
The course may not be finished. Many mocks take place before every topic has been taught, and almost always before revision is complete.
The grade boundaries are borrowed. Exam boards set boundaries after each summer's papers have been marked, and they move from year to year. A mock grade is a mark converted with an older set of boundaries, so it is an estimate rather than a verdict. Our guide to GCSE grades explains why boundaries shift.
It is also a single sitting. A poor night's sleep, a cold or a bad case of nerves can cost marks that have nothing to do with knowledge.
None of this means the results should be ignored. What mocks measure well is where the marks were lost.
A grade 4 on its own tells you very little. A paper where most of the lost marks sit in one topic, or in the last two questions, tells you a great deal.
It also helps to keep three numbers apart, because school reports often show all of them. The mock grade is the result of one set of papers. The predicted grade is a teacher's judgement of what a student is likely to achieve, drawing on mocks and classwork.
A target grade is often generated from earlier data, such as CAT4 scores, and is an aspiration, not a forecast. The three will not always agree. A gap between them is worth a question at parents' evening and is rarely a cause for alarm.
Mocks are worth preparing for properly. The aim is not a perfect grade. It is a result that shows what your child actually knows, so the feedback means something.
Start with the details. Find out which papers are being sat in each subject and which topics are included. Some mocks cover the whole course and some leave out content not yet taught. Revising the wrong topics is an easy way to waste a fortnight.
Choose methods that test memory. A widely cited review of study techniques by Dunlosky and colleagues rated practice testing and spaced revision as the most useful approaches, and rated highlighting and rereading poorly.
In practice, that means exam questions, flashcards and short self-quizzes on topics revisited across several weeks. Our article on revision techniques that work covers the methods in more detail.
Do some papers to time and mark them honestly. Exam boards publish mark schemes and examiner reports alongside past papers. The reports are underused. They describe, question by question, where students commonly lost marks, which is often exactly where marks will be lost again.
Your role as a parent is mostly practical. A printed list of the mock papers on the fridge, a quiet place to work and an agreed time for phones to go away will do more than daily questions about revision.
If you want to help with the content itself, quizzing your child from their own flashcards is one of the most useful things you can do, and it needs no subject knowledge. There is more on this in our guide to helping your child revise.
The grade on a report is the least useful part of a mock. Ask whether the marked papers can come home, or at least be gone through in class with a breakdown by question. Some schools produce a question-level analysis, which shows the marks for each question against the topic it tested. If one exists, ask for it.
Marks are lost for different reasons, and each needs a different fix.
Most students show more than one pattern. Start with the one costing the most marks.
If the marked papers point to the same gaps in one or two subjects, that is usually where one-to-one help makes the clearest difference. HRB's GCSE tutors start with the marked mock papers rather than the syllabus, work out where the marks went, and build the sessions around those gaps. Find out more about our one-to-one GCSE tuition, which runs online or at home in London across AQA, Edexcel, OCR and Cambridge.
Most students show more than one pattern. Start with the one costing the most marks.
Parents' evenings are short, and a specific question gets a more useful answer than a general one. These are worth taking with you.
Teenagers often take mock results harder than they let on. Keep the first conversation short. Ask what surprised them and which paper felt hardest, then leave the planning for another day.
When you do plan, focus on marks and patterns. A grade can feel like a label, but a set of lost marks in two topics is something a student can see a way to fix. If nerves are part of the picture, our guide to improving exam performance without adding stress may help.
From mock results in January to the first GCSE exam on 10 May 2027 is roughly four months. That is enough time to change grades, provided the time goes on the right things.
A useful plan starts from the marks. Put the topics and question types that cost the most marks at the top, especially where the same gap shows up in classwork and homework.
Then weight the plan towards the thresholds that matter. Moving from a grade 3 to a 4 in English or maths changes a student's options more than moving from a 7 to an 8 in a subject they will drop after Year 11. In England, students without a grade 4 in those two subjects must keep studying them after 16.
If your child has a sixth form course in mind, check the entry grades for the A-levels they want now. Our guide to choosing A-level subjects covers how to think about those requirements.
Make each task specific enough to check. "Revise chemistry" is not a plan. "Two exam questions on rates of reaction on Tuesday, marked against the mark scheme, then two more the following week" is.
Build in checkpoints. A second round of mocks, a set of timed papers over the Easter holidays or a short test in class will show whether the gaps are closing.
And leave room for rest. A timetable that fills every evening and weekend rarely survives to Easter, and a tired student revises badly.
Most students do not need a tutor because of one disappointing set of mocks. Extra help tends to be worth it in a few situations.
It is worth asking what the school offers first. Intervention sessions and revision classes after mocks are free, and they are often aimed at exactly these gaps.
If you do look beyond school, good support starts from the actual papers, tells you clearly what it is working on, and adjusts as the gaps close. Our guides to choosing a tutor and to what private tutoring costs in London cover the practical side.
Year 10 mocks usually cover only part of the course and carry less weight than Year 11 mocks. Schools tend to use them to check progress and plan for Year 11 rather than to set predicted grades, although practice varies.
Their real value is timing. A Year 10 mock shows up the gaps while there is a whole summer and a full year to close them. That is far easier than discovering the same gaps the following January.
Mocks are a rehearsal with a purpose. They show where your child stands while there is still time to act. The most useful thing to take from them is not the grade but the marks underneath it.
If you would like a tutor to go through the papers with you and help turn them into a plan for May, book a free consultation with HRB Education. Have the marked papers or the report to hand if you can, as they make the conversation far more useful. If WhatsApp is easier, you can also send us a message there.
Yes. Mock grades do not count towards the final result. A mock sat before the course is finished, or before revision is complete, can understate what a student is capable of by the summer. What matters is how the months after the mocks are used.
Some do. Sixth forms and colleges ask for different things. Some request predicted grades in a reference from the student's school, while others ask applicants to list recent mock grades on the form. Offers are usually conditional on the real GCSE results, so the summer grades are what finally count.
The papers are usually similar in style, and many schools use real past papers. Mocks often feel harder because they come earlier in the year, before every topic has been taught and before revision is finished. The grade boundaries used are from a previous year, so the grades are an approximation.
Tell the school as soon as you can. Policies differ. Some schools arrange a catch-up sitting, while others rely on classwork and other assessments when setting predicted grades. If your child has access arrangements, ask how the school will record the evidence without that paper.
No. If a student is ill or affected by something serious at the time of an exam, the school can apply to the exam board for special consideration. That process works from the papers the student was able to sit. Mock results would only be used if the government cancelled exams nationally.
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