For anyone stuck behind the paywall:
**GCSEs: Only 1 set of mocks needed, schools told**
Ofqual warns that putting pupils through too many assessments could have an adverse effect on some students’ mental well-being.
Ofqual has warned against schools over-assessing their students to gather evidence in the event that exams do not go ahead in future.
In draft guidance published today for consultation, the exams regulator said that a “small number” of schools and colleges had created a “large number of new and additional mock exams and assessments in 2023 for the purpose of gathering evidence”.
But Ofqual said that providing mock exams are completed in line with the guidance published today - and set to come into effect from 2024 - one full set of mocks “should be sufficient”.
The regulator warned that if schools did not follow the guidance over the collection of evidence and placed too much emphasis on assessing students, it could have an “adverse effect on some students’ mental well-being”.
Overall, if followed, Ofqual says it expects that the proposed arrangements “will be of some benefit to students’ mental health and well-being”, as they provide clarity.
Ofqual has said that more details would only be provided on the process for “determining, quality assuring and appealing TAGs (teacher assessed grades)” in the event that exams are cancelled.
The regulator has admitted that the guidance could create “one-off, direct costs and administrative burdens associated with the marking and quality assurance of such teacher assessments” as well as cause difficulties for schools with limited space if they have to put a high number of reasonable adjustments in place for students.
The draft guidance proposed today is similar to the advice given to schools for the summer 2023 exams.
The government confirmed in December that schools should collect evidence of student performance that would be used to award grades in case of the “very unlikely” event that exams were cancelled this year.
And the guidance published by Ofqual and the Department for Education at the time stressed that schools were not being asked to “determine TAGs and should not seek to do so”.
In the consultation - due to close in August - the Department for Education has proposed that TAGs would be used in the event that exams cannot go ahead in future years.
The consultation opens on 10 May and will close on 2 August at 11:45pm.
Stress on students? Most of them don't seem to care about the real exams. They certainly aren't getting stressed about mocks.
Perhaps it depends on the subject but mocks are really useful.
I think it's a response to the rise in mental health issues in students, esp post-covid. The powers that be get to pretend they're doing something (well we stopped them having 2 mocks in year 10 and 2 in year 11 because that upset the poor dears!!) without addressing the real systematic issues, but I'm an evil socialist Corbynista, so what do I know
With maths, all you can really do after January/February is paper, paper, paper
They've had all the content, they just need to see as many exam style questions as possible
If we only have one set of mocks we wouldn't be able to examine on some of our units. If they want less mocks they're going to have to reduce the ridiculous amount of content
I read this, from experience, in the context of "subjects that aren't English or maths get one mock paper in mock week". Because why would each science need 2 mock papers? Or other subjects like history?
Or being told you can only set a one hour paper when the paper should be 1.5 hours or something.
The school I used to work at was basically run by PE teachers. 🙄
To me a mock is a full paper. That is our end if unit test. We 'only' have 4 topics to exam on so they need a minimum of 4 mocks to see what each paper is like
How do we decide tiers of entry? 🤷🏻♀️ what a ridiculous idea. What doesn’t help is every exam now being called a mock. Year 10 mocks? No, they’re just end of year exams.
Exactly this - most of the "mocks" are not actually mocks. Even our proper year 11 mocks weren't a full set of papers. Can't decide tiers for borderline kids on one set of exams, that's ridiculous.
My previous school had y11s sit 3 sets of mocks - around compulsory revision lessons, exam warm-ups, the actual exams and exam feedback lessons there was no time for actual teaching! My current school does 1 mock which feels adequate. My subject doesn't tier though so maybe that would change my mind...
This is how I feel. We do one at the end of year 10, one Nov year 11 and one Feb year 11. I'm history and we have 3 exam papers but we realistically only set one or two in each depending on content covered up to that point.
They usually cover two weeks here and if you count going through results and any revision lessons, we are losing 5-6 weeks' worth of content lessons.
You guys do more than one set of mocks?! Any school I've been at has only ever done one set a year. And that runs the gamut of underperforming schools all the way through to very top schools.
The pig doesn't get any fatter the more you weigh it.
I think yearly exams, making it normal l, helps relieve pressure.
Only doing exams in ks4 increases pressure as there's little resilience developed to those pressures.
Also think that doing exam prep style questions as forms of assessment, regularly, helps. Gets pupils used to the type of questions they will face.
Doing 3-4 sets in year 11 does add pressure, especially if no formal style exams are done previously.
As a parent one set of mocks is enough…
Kiddo has been in bits since September, not sleeping, constant anxiety… and they are one of the high achieving students.
The pressure is beyond what is necessary.
Of course some kids don’t give a shit but the ones that do are probably just holding together in school. Don’t under estimate the effect of this level of pressure at this age.
I’ve found that doing more mocks can reduce the pressure on students.
I used to work in a school that did one full set of mocks in December of year 11, replete with a mock results day. The students were a mess: lots of crying, some vomiting. It was horrible.
My current school do core subject assessments twice a year in the exam hall from year 7 onwards. They do two year 10 mocks on the same schedule: a single or adapted paper for each subject, only covering what they’ve learned so far. Then in year 11 they do two sets of mocks (November and Feb) doing half of the papers each time. It’s always framed as very low stakes, as “practice” of being in the exam hall, and as the best place to make mistakes. There is no “results day”: teachers just give papers back and go through the feedback as they would with any other piece of marked work. We have so little exam anxiety compared to other schools that I’ve worked in, and I think that the way we run assessments has a lot to do with that.
Yeah that's massively excessive... we do one in November as a practice/gauge of what students need to work on and one in March as a 'this will give us your final target grade'. Year 10 do end of year exams in regular classrooms and not the main hall so we call them 'mocks' but they're not really!
For anyone stuck behind the paywall: **GCSEs: Only 1 set of mocks needed, schools told** Ofqual warns that putting pupils through too many assessments could have an adverse effect on some students’ mental well-being. Ofqual has warned against schools over-assessing their students to gather evidence in the event that exams do not go ahead in future. In draft guidance published today for consultation, the exams regulator said that a “small number” of schools and colleges had created a “large number of new and additional mock exams and assessments in 2023 for the purpose of gathering evidence”. But Ofqual said that providing mock exams are completed in line with the guidance published today - and set to come into effect from 2024 - one full set of mocks “should be sufficient”. The regulator warned that if schools did not follow the guidance over the collection of evidence and placed too much emphasis on assessing students, it could have an “adverse effect on some students’ mental well-being”. Overall, if followed, Ofqual says it expects that the proposed arrangements “will be of some benefit to students’ mental health and well-being”, as they provide clarity. Ofqual has said that more details would only be provided on the process for “determining, quality assuring and appealing TAGs (teacher assessed grades)” in the event that exams are cancelled. The regulator has admitted that the guidance could create “one-off, direct costs and administrative burdens associated with the marking and quality assurance of such teacher assessments” as well as cause difficulties for schools with limited space if they have to put a high number of reasonable adjustments in place for students. The draft guidance proposed today is similar to the advice given to schools for the summer 2023 exams. The government confirmed in December that schools should collect evidence of student performance that would be used to award grades in case of the “very unlikely” event that exams were cancelled this year. And the guidance published by Ofqual and the Department for Education at the time stressed that schools were not being asked to “determine TAGs and should not seek to do so”. In the consultation - due to close in August - the Department for Education has proposed that TAGs would be used in the event that exams cannot go ahead in future years. The consultation opens on 10 May and will close on 2 August at 11:45pm.
Stress on students? Most of them don't seem to care about the real exams. They certainly aren't getting stressed about mocks. Perhaps it depends on the subject but mocks are really useful.
I think it's a response to the rise in mental health issues in students, esp post-covid. The powers that be get to pretend they're doing something (well we stopped them having 2 mocks in year 10 and 2 in year 11 because that upset the poor dears!!) without addressing the real systematic issues, but I'm an evil socialist Corbynista, so what do I know
With maths, all you can really do after January/February is paper, paper, paper They've had all the content, they just need to see as many exam style questions as possible
Exactly
If we only have one set of mocks we wouldn't be able to examine on some of our units. If they want less mocks they're going to have to reduce the ridiculous amount of content
>If we only have one set of mocks we wouldn't be able to examine on some of our units. Mocks ≠ end of unit tests
I read this, from experience, in the context of "subjects that aren't English or maths get one mock paper in mock week". Because why would each science need 2 mock papers? Or other subjects like history? Or being told you can only set a one hour paper when the paper should be 1.5 hours or something. The school I used to work at was basically run by PE teachers. 🙄
To me a mock is a full paper. That is our end if unit test. We 'only' have 4 topics to exam on so they need a minimum of 4 mocks to see what each paper is like
To ofsted, a mock is a full paper (past paper) examined in exam-like conditions. Low stakes formal testing in class is not a mock
How do we decide tiers of entry? 🤷🏻♀️ what a ridiculous idea. What doesn’t help is every exam now being called a mock. Year 10 mocks? No, they’re just end of year exams.
Exactly this - most of the "mocks" are not actually mocks. Even our proper year 11 mocks weren't a full set of papers. Can't decide tiers for borderline kids on one set of exams, that's ridiculous.
My previous school had y11s sit 3 sets of mocks - around compulsory revision lessons, exam warm-ups, the actual exams and exam feedback lessons there was no time for actual teaching! My current school does 1 mock which feels adequate. My subject doesn't tier though so maybe that would change my mind...
This is how I feel. We do one at the end of year 10, one Nov year 11 and one Feb year 11. I'm history and we have 3 exam papers but we realistically only set one or two in each depending on content covered up to that point. They usually cover two weeks here and if you count going through results and any revision lessons, we are losing 5-6 weeks' worth of content lessons.
That's exactly the issue. Spending so much time on exam practice really impacts the time we have for content
You guys do more than one set of mocks?! Any school I've been at has only ever done one set a year. And that runs the gamut of underperforming schools all the way through to very top schools. The pig doesn't get any fatter the more you weigh it.
Yes one in November and march and june
I think one set of mocks per year is more than enough especially in terms of student wellbeing and staff workload.
I think yearly exams, making it normal l, helps relieve pressure. Only doing exams in ks4 increases pressure as there's little resilience developed to those pressures. Also think that doing exam prep style questions as forms of assessment, regularly, helps. Gets pupils used to the type of questions they will face. Doing 3-4 sets in year 11 does add pressure, especially if no formal style exams are done previously.
As a parent one set of mocks is enough… Kiddo has been in bits since September, not sleeping, constant anxiety… and they are one of the high achieving students. The pressure is beyond what is necessary. Of course some kids don’t give a shit but the ones that do are probably just holding together in school. Don’t under estimate the effect of this level of pressure at this age.
I’ve found that doing more mocks can reduce the pressure on students. I used to work in a school that did one full set of mocks in December of year 11, replete with a mock results day. The students were a mess: lots of crying, some vomiting. It was horrible. My current school do core subject assessments twice a year in the exam hall from year 7 onwards. They do two year 10 mocks on the same schedule: a single or adapted paper for each subject, only covering what they’ve learned so far. Then in year 11 they do two sets of mocks (November and Feb) doing half of the papers each time. It’s always framed as very low stakes, as “practice” of being in the exam hall, and as the best place to make mistakes. There is no “results day”: teachers just give papers back and go through the feedback as they would with any other piece of marked work. We have so little exam anxiety compared to other schools that I’ve worked in, and I think that the way we run assessments has a lot to do with that.
One set of y11 mocks is definitely enough. Other tests throughout KS4 - and KS3 - can be useful exam practice without being officially 'mock exams.'
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Yeah that's massively excessive... we do one in November as a practice/gauge of what students need to work on and one in March as a 'this will give us your final target grade'. Year 10 do end of year exams in regular classrooms and not the main hall so we call them 'mocks' but they're not really!