Year 10 mocks revision timetable: a realistic 4-week plan

The short answer: four weeks, past questions from week two

Mocks need about four weeks: a fixed session of 25 to 40 minutes on school nights and two longer blocks at the weekend, with the balance shifting from recall to timed past questions as the dates approach. Fewer than three weeks and you are cramming; more than six and the effort fades before the papers arrive. It is a shorter, sharper version of the 8-week plan for the real exams, and it has a different purpose.

The purpose is information. A mock is the only time before the real thing that you sit the full paper, in silence, under the clock, with a mark scheme applied to what you actually wrote. What comes back is a list of the topics and question types that lose you marks. Revise properly for four weeks and that list is accurate. Do not, and the list tells you only that you did not revise, which you already knew.

The schedule below is the same for Year 10 and Year 11; what differs is how much of the course there is to cover.

What mocks are for, and what they are not

Schools run mocks for you and for themselves. For you: exam practice under real conditions, an honest measure of where each subject stands, and a rehearsal of the stamina a two-hour paper takes. For the school: evidence for predicted grades and college applications, and for deciding which sets and interventions to run in the spring.

What mocks are not is a verdict. A Year 10 mock tests a fraction of a two-year course, often before the topic has been finished in class; a Year 11 mock in November tests material you will go over at least twice more before June. A bad grade in November is a good week in April, provided you know what went wrong. Schools also differ in how generously they mark mocks, which makes the grade the least useful number on the sheet. The marks per question are the point.

When mocks fall, and how many weeks you actually have

Year 11 mocks usually fall between late November and January, and many schools run a second round in late February or March. Year 10 varies more: some schools run mocks after Christmas, and most run end-of-year exams in June or July. Your school publishes its own dates, so ask for them now if you do not have them, because the plan starts from the date, not from today. The real exam timetables are collected by JCQ and are worth a glance too: a March mock sits close to the May start.

Count back four weeks from the first paper and be honest about what those weeks contain: a week with a school trip, a birthday and two matches is not a revision week. If the four do not hold enough, start a week earlier rather than doubling the sessions. Spreading the same work across more days reliably beats the same hours packed into fewer, and a fifth thin week costs less than a crammed fourth.

• November or December mocks: start in the last week of October, straight after half-term.
• January mocks: start in the first week of December, keep a lighter version going over Christmas, and do the full papers in the first week back.
• March mocks: start in the first week of February and use the February half-term for the weekend blocks.
• Year 10 summer mocks: start four weeks before the first paper. The course is still being taught, so revise what is finished and keep up with what is not.

The four-week schedule

Five school-night sessions and two weekend blocks a week. School-night sessions are 25 to 40 minutes: one topic, from memory, marked. Weekend blocks are 60 to 90 minutes with a break in the middle. Friday night is off in every week, and so is sleep — a late night before a paper is paid for the next morning at a bad rate.

The order matters more than the amounts. Four weeks out is for finding gaps, not fixing them; the temptation is to start with the subject you like, which is comfortable and useless. Two weeks out is the first timed paper, and it will feel early. It is not: a paper you sit and mark teaches more than a paper you read through, and you need a week to act on what the first one tells you.

If nine subjects will not fit, drop the greens entirely and give the weekend blocks to the two subjects with the most red. Three topics moved from red to amber beat every topic glanced at once.

What a session looks like in mock season

The shape is the same as any fifteen-minute session, stretched: pick fast, retrieve from memory, mark honestly. What changes is the material: exam-style questions replace flashcards as the date gets closer, because a mock tests whether you can answer the question as set, not whether you know the topic.

• Weeks 4 and 3: recall. Blank page, one topic, everything you can write in ten minutes; then the notes, then a different colour for what was missing. Flashcards for definitions, dates and formulae. Active recall vs re-reading covers why this and not highlighting.
• Weeks 2 and 1: questions. Past papers or end-of-chapter questions, from memory, against the clock. Mark with the mark scheme rather than your impression, and write down why each mark was lost: did not know it, knew it but did not write it, ran out of time, misread the question. Those four reasons need four different fixes.
• Every week: the list. A single page per subject of what is still red. It should shrink. If it is not shrinking, the sessions are too comfortable.

Two traps. Making beautiful notes counts as preparation, not revision — if the notes are a mess, sort them once in week four and not again. And re-reading a topic you already know is pleasant and useless; the spaced repetition guide explains why returning to something just before you forget it beats returning to something you remember fine.

Keeping the red list by hand works. If deciding what to do each night is the part that stalls, an app that tracks weak topics and picks the next session for you removes that decision — FacilStudy, the one we are building, does it from photos of your notes and is still in testing rather than in the shops. The list is the thing; how you keep it does not matter.

What to do with the results

The results are the reason the mocks exist, and most of their value is lost in the first week after they come back. When a paper is returned, do three things before the grade has a chance to matter.

1. Go through it question by question, the day it comes back, and sort every lost mark into the four reasons: did not know, knew but did not write, out of time, misread. Count them. A paper where most marks went to "knew but did not write" is a technique problem, and a good one to have; one where most went to "did not know" is a content list.
2. Rebuild the list. Every "did not know" topic goes straight back to red, whatever colour it was before. That list is the first thing you revise in the new term, and it is where the 8-week plan starts from when the real exams come into view.
3. Ask the teacher one specific question. Not "how can I improve?" but "I lost six marks on the six-mark questions for not linking back to the question — what should the last sentence of those look like?" Specific questions get specific answers.

Then file the paper: in April, a folder of marked mocks is worth more than any revision guide.

A parent's role

If you are the parent, your job in mock season is smaller than it feels and more useful than it looks. The student owns the list, the timetable and the result. You own the conditions and the calm.

• Get the dates on the fridge, four weeks out, and count back with them once. Then leave the plan alone.
• Protect the slot and the sleep. The phone in another room for the session, by agreement; lights out at a sensible hour in mock week, even under protest.
• Be the tester. Reading questions off a card and saying "not quite" needs no subject knowledge and is the best thing a parent can do with fifteen minutes.
• Treat the results as information, out loud. "What did the paper tell you?" is the question; the grade is not the conversation. A parent who reacts to a November grade as a verdict teaches the student to hide the January one.
• Ask which pile was biggest, once, after the papers are back, and what they are going to do about it. That is the whole debrief.

What not to do: build the timetable, count the hours, or compare the grades with a sibling's or a friend's. The longer version of how to help without a nightly argument is in How to help your teenager revise without the arguments.