How to Revise for GCSE Mocks: A Plan for Years 10 and 11

Quick answer

• Start three to four weeks before your first mock; two weeks still works if you go reds-first.
• Ask each teacher what the mock covers, then rate every topic red, amber or green.
• Revise by testing yourself and rotate three or four subjects a day.
• Sit at least one timed past paper in your biggest subjects and mark it against the mark scheme.
• Mocks don't count towards your final grade, but they are your only full rehearsal.

Your mocks are a few weeks away. It might be the first time you've sat every GCSE subject back to back, nine or ten subjects in a couple of weeks, in a hall, with an invigilator. You can't revise two years of everything again. You can revise the right things in the right order, and that is what this guide shows you.

To revise for GCSE mocks, ask each teacher which topics the mock covers, rate every topic red, amber or green, and spend most of your time on reds in your biggest subjects. Revise by testing yourself, rotate three or four subjects a day, and sit at least one timed past paper per big subject, marked against the official mark scheme.

Do GCSE mocks matter?

Mocks are exams your school sets and marks itself. They don't count towards your final GCSE grade. They still matter, for three reasons.

• They are kept as evidence. Ofqual, the exams regulator in England, asks schools and colleges to make sure students sit mock exams in exam conditions before their formal exams, and to keep the papers. That gives schools evidence of your performance in the unlikely event that the government decides exams can't go ahead. Ofqual says one set of mocks for this purpose should be enough, and in a normal year your summer exams decide your grade.
• Your school uses them. Teachers use mock results to decide what to reteach. Ask yours what else they are used for: some schools use them for predicted grades on sixth-form or college applications, or when deciding which tier you sit.
• They are your only full rehearsal. Sitting three Maths papers, two English Literature papers and several science papers in two weeks is a skill in itself. Better to find out now that you run out of time on Paper 2.

When to start, and how much a day

Start three to four weeks before your first paper if you can. You have more subjects than at any other point in school, and each topic needs to come back more than once before it sticks. Two weeks is still enough for a focused plan; you just skip more.

How far apart should those returns be? Nicholas Cepeda and colleagues tested more than 1,350 people on facts they had learned, with gaps of up to three and a half months before a review. In their 2008 study, the best gap depended on how far away the test was: for a test one week after the review, the best gap was about 20 to 40% of that week, so roughly one and a half to three days. In practice, revise a topic, come back to it two or three days later, then once more nearer the mock.

As a realistic target while you are still in lessons:

• School nights: one to two focused hours on top of homework.
• Weekends: three to four hours, in blocks of 30 to 40 minutes with breaks.
• Every day: ten minutes of quick recall on something from earlier in the week.

A steady hour every day beats a five-hour Sunday and nothing else.

Step 1: find out what each mock covers

This is the step most students skip, and it can cut your list in half. Some schools set full past papers; others set only the topics you've been taught so far, especially in Year 10. Ask each teacher two questions: which topics are in the mock, and which paper or papers will you sit?

Then turn each subject's list into a checklist. The exam board's specification is the full list of what can be examined, so use it for any subject where the mock is a full paper. Rate every topic:

• Red: you couldn't answer a question on it now.
• Amber: you know some of it but would drop marks.
• Green: you could answer an exam question on it today.

Step 2: decide which subjects come first

With nine or ten subjects, you can't give them equal time, and you shouldn't. Put your hours where the most marks are moving.

1. Maths, English and the sciences first. They have the most papers and the most content. AQA GCSE Maths, for example, is three papers of 1 hour 30 minutes, each worth 80 marks, and Paper 1 is non-calculator. If your mock includes Paper 1, practise without a calculator now.
2. Then the subjects where your reds pile up. Five reds in History matter more than one in Geography.
3. Greens get short recall checks only. Don't spend an evening on what you already know because it feels good.

Watch for subjects with their own traps. AQA GCSE English Literature is closed book: you only get the extract printed on the paper. So for your Shakespeare play and 19th-century novel, test yourself on a short list of key quotations for each main character and theme, rather than re-reading the whole text. If you're on a different board, check your own specification for the same details.

The sciences have a trap of their own: the required practicals. In AQA GCSE Biology, questions that draw on the required practical activities count for at least 15% of the overall marks, and AQA lists ten of them. For each practical, make sure you can explain the method, name the variables and say what the results show. Chemistry and Physics have their own lists in their specifications.

Step 3: revise by testing yourself

Re-reading your notes feels productive and does very little. John Dunlosky and colleagues reviewed ten common study techniques in 2013 and rated practice testing and distributed practice (spreading study out over time) as high utility, while rereading and underlining came out as low utility.

The testing effect works even without feedback. In Roediger and Karpicke's 2006 experiments, students who took recall tests on a passage remembered substantially more two days and a week later than students who restudied it, even though the restudy group felt more confident.

For each red or amber topic:

1. Close your notes and write down everything you remember. That's active recall.
2. Check against your notes and fill the gaps in a different colour.
3. Answer two or three exam questions on the topic and mark them against the mark scheme.
4. Come back two or three days later and test yourself again.

Rotate three or four subjects a day rather than spending a whole day on one, so every subject keeps moving.

Step 4: sit timed past papers

Past papers show you the question styles, the mark allocations and exactly what earns marks. Get them free from your exam board: AQA's past papers and mark schemes search, OCR's past paper finder, or your own board's website if you're with Pearson Edexcel, WJEC or another board. If the newest paper is locked, use an older one.

You don't need to sit every paper. Aim for one full timed paper in each of your biggest subjects before the mock, plus exam questions on your reds. Mark each paper within a day, then list every lost mark and why you lost it. Our guide to using past papers properly walks through that marking step, and GCSE exam technique covers command words and timing.

A 3-week GCSE mock revision plan

Here is how the time splits. Move the days to fit your timetable, and put your hardest subject where you are freshest.

Short on time? Squash days 3 to 15 into ten days and drop the second round of ambers. If you are down to the last day or two, our last-minute revision guide covers what to keep and what to skip. To build the week itself, see how to make a revision timetable.

Keeping the plan going

Look at what that plan asks of you: a checklist for every subject, past papers from more than one exam board, marking your own six-mark answers fairly, and deciding every evening which of nine subjects gets the next slot. Root is an AI tutor and study system, built for the IB by an IB student and supporting GCSE and IGCSE, that keeps your classes, topics, notes and files in one place, teaches step by step and checks what you still remember. Its Test prep makes practice papers in your exam's style from your topics and exam board, marks them like an examiner against a mark scheme and shows what to study next; the free plan includes 2 papers a week. On paid plans the Planner plans the run-up to each test around your classes and free time, and every new account starts with a 5-day Pro trial that includes it, no card needed. Here is how Root works, and you can start free whenever it suits you.

Year 10 mocks vs Year 11 mocks

Year 10 mocks usually cover only what you've been taught so far. Treat them as practice for the method: a checklist, self-testing, one timed paper per subject. A Year 10 mock that goes badly costs you very little and shows you exactly what to fix.

Year 11 mocks are usually closer to the real thing, often full papers on most of the course. This is where the plan above matters most, and where your result is most likely to shape what your teachers reteach before the summer.

After the mocks

When your papers come back, the grade on the front is the least useful part. Go through each paper and put every lost mark into one of three groups:

• Didn't know it: add the topic to your red list for the next term.
• Knew it, lost the marks anyway: missed the command word, didn't show working, or didn't use a quotation. Practise that question type.
• Ran out of time: practise timed sections and plan minutes per question.

Ask each teacher one question: "Where did I lose the most marks?" Then fold the gaps into your plan for the run-up to summer. Our full guide to revising for GCSEs covers that longer stretch.

A disappointing mock is useful information while there is still time to act on it. Pick your first red topic tonight and test yourself on it.