When are GCSE mocks? Typical windows and how schools schedule them

GCSE mocks are not set by AQA, Edexcel, OCR or WJEC/Eduqas. Every school picks its own mock schedule, chooses its own papers, and decides how many rounds to run. That is why one friend can be sitting mocks the week before Christmas while another is doing them in February.

Even though there is no national mock date, the windows are fairly predictable. Most secondary schools in England run mocks in November, February, and often a final round in March or April. This guide walks through the typical patterns, why schools pick the windows they do, and what the difference is between a mock and a pre-public exam (PPE).

2 to 3 – Mock rounds. Most schools run two or three rounds of GCSE mocks across Year 11, typically in November, February and sometimes April.

Most schools land on some version of the same schedule. Round one before Christmas, round two in the middle of the spring term, and often a light round three just before Easter as a final check. Here is what each window is normally used for. Our Year 11 revision timetable shows how to plan revision around these mock windows across the full academic year.

November is the most common window for a first full round of Year 11 mocks. Schools usually run them across two or three weeks, either in the last fortnight of November or the first two weeks of December before the Christmas holidays. If your child is heading into that window now, our guide to preparing for Year 11 mocks walks through the six-week runway.

These mocks are largely diagnostic. Students have not covered the full specification yet, and the point is to give teachers a baseline: Who is on track, who is falling behind, and which topics need reteaching in the spring term. Many schools use November mocks to set predicted grades that go on sixth form and college applications, which is why they often feel higher-stakes than the timing suggests.

The mid-year mock window usually sits in the second half of February or the first two weeks of March. By this point most schools have finished teaching the majority of the specification, so these mocks are closer to the real thing and often used to firm up predicted grades.

Some schools call this second round PPE (pre-public exam) rather than mock, and they treat it as a full exam simulation with real timetables, invigilators and formal seating plans. The purpose is to expose students to the exam experience and give them one more data point before the summer.

Not every school runs a third round, but many do a short set of exams either in the two weeks before Easter or in the first week back. This round is deliberately close to the real exams to check that the recovery work done since February is landing.

Often these are single papers per subject rather than full mocks, or they focus on specific weaknesses the February results highlighted. If your school runs these, expect them to feel more targeted and less exhausting than the earlier rounds.

Not really. Both terms get used loosely, so different schools mean different things.

A mock is a general term for any practice exam a school runs. It might be a full paper under exam conditions, a shortened version, or even a mock done at home. Schools use mocks flexibly through the year, and they are set by teachers rather than boards.

A PPE (pre-public exam) is a specific event usually taken later in the year (often February or March), run under strict exam conditions: Formal seating, invigilators, exam board question papers, and a strict marking process. The results are treated as the closest available predictor of a student's summer grade.

In practice, if your school has both, the PPE tends to be the round that carries the most weight for predicted grades. If your school only says mocks, that usually means their February or March round is the equivalent of a PPE at another school. Our guide to GCSE mock exams covers how schools mark mocks and what they use the results for.

Yes, most of the time. Teachers usually use recent past papers or specimen papers from the exam board, sometimes with the year removed so students cannot recognise them. This is the sensible choice because the questions are properly calibrated, the mark scheme is known, and the difficulty matches the real thing.

Some schools use secure practice papers, which are new papers the board writes specifically for mock use. These are only available to schools and cannot be searched for online, which stops students from finding the answers in advance. If your school uses these, you will only see the paper on the day.

Either way, the question style, timing, and mark allocation should mirror what students will face in the summer. This is why past paper practice at home is such a strong preparation for mocks: You are doing the same exercise the mocks are drawn from. Our guide to effective revision explains how to combine past papers with active recall and spaced repetition, and Cognito's GCSE courses pair topic lessons with quiz questions modelled on real board style, so heavily-tested subjects like GCSE Maths AQA and GCSE Chemistry AQA can be revised in the same format the mock will use.

A common complaint from Year 11 students is that November mocks come before they have covered the full course. That is true, and it is deliberate.

Schools use November mocks for four things: Setting predicted grades for sixth form and college applications, spotting students who need intervention, giving teachers evidence for tiering decisions in maths and combined science, and getting students used to exam conditions. None of these require the whole specification to be finished.

If your child is worried about topics that have not been taught yet, the answer is usually just to skip those questions rather than to guess. Teachers know the timing and will mark accordingly.

There are a few practical constraints that shape most schools' mock schedules. Understanding them helps explain why the same broad windows keep coming up.

Mock papers usually need at least two weeks of teacher marking after the exam, plus time to write reports and hold parents' evenings. So a school running mocks in early November can send out results in late November or early December, in time for the mid-year parents' evening.

Schools also try to avoid clashing mocks with other big events: October half-term, GCSE options for younger years, sixth form open evenings, and Year 11 university and college trips. That is why most November mocks concentrate in the last two weeks of November rather than being spread out.

Spring mocks work around the same constraints in reverse. Schools want them finished with time to feed back before Easter revision starts, which pushes them into February or the first fortnight of March.

Most schools now run at least one round of mocks in Year 10, usually in the summer term (June or July). These are sometimes called end-of-year exams rather than mocks, but they serve the same purpose.

Year 10 mocks are lighter, cover less of the specification, and are mostly used to check progress at the end of the first GCSE year. They do not usually count for predicted grades, but they do give a useful early signal of who is on track for their target grades.

A smaller number of schools run a second Year 10 mock in the spring term (February or March). If your school does this, expect it to focus on the topics taught so far rather than a full mock of every paper.

Some schools run mocks in a tight two-week block with multiple subjects a day. This is genuinely tough, and students often ask whether they can spread them out. Usually the answer is no: The tight timetable is deliberate, because it mirrors the real thing in June. Our guide to GCSE exam dates shows when the summer exams start and how boards space out papers.

What you can do is manage revision so that you are not trying to cram every subject at once. Work backwards from the mock timetable using a proper revision timetable, allocate revision blocks to the subjects landing later in the schedule, and treat the earlier mocks as the ones that need immediate attention. If you have four mocks in one week, you cannot revise all four equally in the days before, so use the term as a whole and rely on active recall rather than last-minute cramming.