What a Year 11 mock result meansWhat a Year 11 mock result means

A mock is usually set and marked by your teenager's school rather than an exam board. Most schools use a past paper or a practice paper in the same shape as the real exam. 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).

Schools choose which papers to use and how to turn marks into grades, so the way a mock is graded can differ from one school to the next.

The real grade boundaries are set only after the summer exams have been sat and marked. Ofqual, the exam regulator, says grade boundaries are never set in advance, because it's very hard to know beforehand how difficult students will find a paper (Ofqual blog).

So a school marking a mock in December has to borrow something: usually a past year's boundaries, or its own judgement. The exam boards publish past boundaries, and they move from one exam series to the next (AQA, Pearson Edexcel, OCR).

There's a second reason. In December, some topics may not have been taught yet. As Ofqual has pointed out, students sitting a mock may not have finished the course yet (Ofqual blog). A mock grade tells you where things stand now, with the course still running.

The marked papers usually tell you more than the grade. If the school shares them, or a topic breakdown, look for:

• topics where marks were lost on more than one paper
• a gap between the calculator papers and the non-calculator paper
• marks dropped because the working wasn't shown
• questions left blank near the end, which can mean time ran short rather than the maths being unknown

Two or three clear topics to work on is a better outcome from a mock than a grade on its own.

Mocks exist to find gaps while there's still time to work on them. A lower grade than hoped for is the mock doing its job.

Start with what went well, then agree one or two topics to focus on for the next few weeks. Keep it about their own paper, not how friends or siblings did. Short, regular practice tends to help more than one long session the night before.

Parents' evening or a short email to the maths teacher can fill in the gaps:

• How were the mock grades worked out?
• Which tier is my teenager likely to be entered for, Foundation or Higher?
• Which topics should they focus on first?
• Is the school running any extra sessions or revision support?

The school decides the tier of entry (Ofqual student guide). Our guide to Foundation or Higher explains how schools decide.

Once you know the topics to work on, regular practice at the right level can help. NextJen's GCSE Maths practice is built on the Department for Education's GCSE Maths subject content, which every exam board's specification follows, with typed answers and the full method on every question. Each NextJen practice paper shows the mark and an estimated grade, always labelled as an estimate, and the parent view shows an estimated grade for the level your teenager is working at.

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.