After the mocks: a calm 8-week planAfter the mocks: a calm 8-week plan

Before planning anything, look at the marked mock papers together, if the school shares them. Look for topics where marks were lost more than once, and for marks lost through missing working or running out of time. Our guide to what a Year 11 mock result means explains why the grade itself is only a guide.

GCSE Maths covers six areas, set nationally by the Department for Education: number; algebra; ratio, proportion and rates of change; geometry and measures; probability; and statistics (DfE subject content). Sorting lost marks into those six areas makes patterns easier to see.

A list of every weak topic can feel like too much. Ask your teenager to choose three topics to start with, ideally ones that came up more than once and that they nearly had. It often makes sense to start with topics that are nearly secure.

Write the three down where you'll both see them.

Many families find short sessions of 20 to 30 minutes, four or five days a week, easier to keep going than long weekend sessions. A simple shape:

• Week 1: go through the mock papers, choose the first three topics and agree when practice happens.
• Weeks 2 and 3: work on the first topic, then the second. Start each session with five minutes on something already secure.
• Week 4: the third topic, plus one section of a non-calculator paper, untimed.
• Week 5: a check-in. Which topics feel better? Swap in new ones where they do.
• Weeks 6 and 7: the next topics, with a few mixed questions each session so earlier topics stay fresh.
• Week 8: one full paper, timed, then mark it together and choose the topics for the next block.

If a week goes wrong, pick up where you left off. The plan is there to help, not to be kept perfectly.

Ofqual requires exam boards to give students a formulae and equations sheet in GCSE Maths exams, and students don't need to memorise the formulae on it. This started with the 2025 exams (Ofqual decisions, 2024), and in May 2026 Ofqual decided the sheets will stay for exams from 2028 onwards, for as long as the current GCSE Maths courses run (Ofqual decisions, 2026).

Find the sheet your teenager's exam board publishes and keep it beside them when they practise, so they know where everything is on the day. The sheet lists formulae. It doesn't say when to use them, so worked examples still matter.

GCSE Maths papers include questions without a calculator. For example, AQA's GCSE Maths is three papers of 1 hour 30 minutes each, and the first is sat without a calculator (AQA specification). Some calculator-free practice each week gives written methods regular use.

The summer exams usually run from May into June. For 2026, Ofqual's student guide gave the dates as 7 May to 23 June (Ofqual student guide). The school will share your teenager's own timetable when it's ready.

Agree the routine together, and let your teenager lead on which topics come first. Notice the effort and the routine more than the marks. Keep the talk about their own progress, not how friends or siblings are doing. If they seem stuck or worried, ask the maths teacher about support at school.

NextJen's GCSE Maths practice fits this kind of plan. There are short lessons with worked examples and common mistakes, and practice questions come with typed answers and a worked method that uses the question's own numbers. Each practice paper shows the mark and an estimated grade, always labelled as an estimate.

You can try a question to see how the typed answers and worked steps feel, or see what's included in GCSE Maths. GCSE Maths on NextJen is £25 a month per student (£20 a month for founding families), paid monthly. You can cancel at any time and keep access to the end of the month you've paid for.