Are mock exams a good way to determine final GCSE and A level results? Can students expect fair assessments? What can you do to ensure that your results reflect your skills and effort?

In this video, I break down the rationale of using mock exam results to figure out your final grades for this year.

If you need help preparing for you GCSE or A level exams, take our free assessment to find out what areas you need to focus on and how a tutor can help you improve.

The potential problems with using mock results to determine final exam grades in 2020

1. Grade boundaries aren’t standardised across schools which can impact the results; sometimes teachers are less lenient as they don’t want students to feel complacent before the final exam.

2. Not all schools follow the scheme of work chronologically so students aren’t tested on the same syllabus topics at the same time.

3. The date of the mocks varies between institutions, which could possibly give some students more time and contact hours to revise for them.

4. The past papers used for the exam differs from school to school.

5. Some mock exams are marked in a way that the top percentile the students in a class are graded A*, the percentile below an A and so on.Watch our video here discussing these issues in more detail.

The best thing we can do right now is sit tight and wait for more communication from Ofqal and UCAS.

‍Some useful exam update links:

‍Ofqal: https://tinyurl.com/sjcwsep

‍UCAS: https://tinyurl.com/v44qzbx

‍AQA: http://tiny.cc/vhwrlz

‍Edexcel: http://tiny.cc/dfwrlz

‍Eduqas: http://tiny.cc/8fwrlz

‍WJEC: http://tiny.cc/4gwrlz

‍IB: http://tiny.cc/ylwrlz