How to Revise for GCSE Maths Mocks: A 4-Week Topic Plan with Free Practice

Many schools run Year 11 maths mocks somewhere between November and January, and plenty run Year 10 mocks in the summer term. When parents ask me how to prepare, they have usually been told to get their child doing past papers. Past papers are useful, but only once your child can do most of the questions on them. Before that, they spend an hour meeting questions they have not learned properly, and they finish the paper knowing they did badly but not what to practise next.

So I would start with topics and leave full papers until the last week. The plan below uses short sessions, one topic at a time, with free practice from our Maths Skills Lab.

Why practise topics before papers

When a student gets question 14 wrong on a paper, all they learn is that question 14 went wrong. They do not get another question like it straight away, and they are on to a different topic by question 15.

Practising one topic at a time means they can watch a worked example, try a set of similar questions, look at what went wrong and try another set. Twenty or thirty questions of the same type in one sitting is usually what it takes for the order of the steps to stick.

Papers still have a job to do. They practise choosing the right method when the topics are mixed together, and working to the time limit. That is why they come in the final week.

What one session looks like

Each session is 20 to 30 minutes on a single skill. In the Skills Lab, your child picks the skill and a level, then opens Teach, which works through one example a step at a time with a short note on each line. After that they switch to Practise for ten questions at the same level, write the working on paper, and check each answer as they go.

Use the score to decide what comes next. The Lab counts a level as secure at 8 out of 10, so if your child gets 8 or more without looking back at the example, move up a level. If several answers go wrong at the same step, stay on that level, look at the example again and try a new set of ten.

When they get one wrong, ask them to circle the first line where it went wrong. The final answer on its own does not tell you whether the problem was the method, a sign, or misreading the question.

Start each skill at a level where your child can do some of the questions on their own. If the first set is far too hard, most students give up before they have had a fair go at the method.

Week 1: Number

Number skills come up on all three GCSE maths papers, often in the middle of a longer question. One slip with a negative or a fraction early on can cost the rest of the marks in that question.

• Negative numbers, including multiplying and dividing
• Adding and subtracting fractions
• Laws of indices
• Standard form
• If your child is sitting Higher: simplifying surds and recurring decimals to fractions

With fractions, watch what happens when your child adds. A student who can multiply fractions perfectly well will often add the denominators when adding, writing 1/3 + 1/4 = 2/7. If that is the mistake, practise adding fractions on its own rather than fractions in general.

Week 2: Core algebra

Algebra is about 30% of the marks on a Higher paper and about 20% on Foundation, and a lot of it depends on the same few methods.

• Expanding brackets
• Factorising quadratics
• Solving equations, up to unknowns on both sides
• Rearranging formulae
• The nth term of a linear sequence

Week 3: Selected Higher topics

For a Foundation student, use this week to go back over whichever skills from weeks 1 and 2 were slowest. For a Higher student aiming at a 7 or above, these topics are worth the time because they tend to appear in the longer, harder questions.

• Simultaneous equations
• Completing the square
• The quadratic formula
• Algebraic fractions

Once a skill is going well, try it in Speed mode. It times each question, so your child can see whether they are getting quicker. That matters in the exam, because the questions near the end are often worth more marks and need time left over.

Week 4: Past papers

Before the full paper, go through a few of the harder questions together, without the clock running. The Skills Lab has walkthroughs of the last five questions on each of the three Edexcel Higher papers from summer 2023, 15 questions altogether. Each one can be redone with different numbers, so your child can practise the same method again.

Then sit one full paper in 90 minutes with the phone in another room. If your child spends more than about ten minutes stuck on one question, they should leave a space, move on and come back at the end. Tell them to write down any working they can, even if they cannot finish, because many GCSE maths questions give method marks for correct steps.

Once it is marked, go through every lost mark and write next to it why it was lost: they did not know the method, they knew it but slipped on a calculation, they misread the question, or they ran out of time. Our post on what to do with mock results explains how to use that list.

If you would like a teacher to mark the paper and write feedback on where the marks went, Mark a Mock starts at £39.99. The grade boundaries tool gives an estimated grade from the boundaries published for past exam series. Treat it as an estimate, because schools often set their own boundaries for mocks.

Questions parents ask

How long should my child revise for GCSE maths mocks?

Four or five short sessions a week for four weeks covers the main topics. If homework for other subjects is already filling the evenings, three sessions a week on the weakest topics is still worth doing.

Should my child do past papers or topic questions first?

For most students, topic questions first. If the school has already told you which topics went badly, start with those. If not, one paper at the start can show you where the gaps are, then go back to topic practice.

Is the Skills Lab free?

It is free to use with no account. The worked examples are easier to follow on a laptop or desktop than on a phone.

Do mocks matter if they are not the real exam?

Some schools use mock results when deciding predicted grades, sets or sixth form offers, so it is worth asking how your child's school uses them. We cover this in why GCSE mock exams matter.