How Do Online Tutors Run Mock Exams?

How the session actually runs

The paper is released at the start and not before. The student's camera shows hands, desk and paper rather than face, and the meeting records throughout. The tutor stays on the call and says nothing — this is the part that feels strange to a family the first time, and it is the part that makes the result mean something.

Continuous video invigilation of a ninety-minute paper is possible and is expensive to staff, so the honest compromise most providers use is a check at the start, a check at the midpoint, a check at the end, and an unbroken recording of the desk in between. That is enough for a mock whose purpose is diagnosis rather than certification.

When time is called, the pen goes down and the pages are photographed within five minutes, in order, and sent. Nothing is added afterwards. That rule is the only thing standing between a mock and an exercise, and it has to be stated before the paper starts rather than assumed.

What makes it a predictor rather than a practice sheet

Four conditions, and all four have to hold. The first is the right paper for the right specification. Pearson Edexcel 1MA1 and AQA 8300 each set three papers of 1 hour 30 minutes and 80 marks, with Paper 1 non-calculator. Cambridge OCR J560 sets three papers per tier at 100 marks each, and its non-calculator paper is Paper 2 at Foundation and Paper 5 at Higher. A student revising on the assumption that Paper 1 is always the non-calculator paper has prepared for the wrong conditions on J560.

The second is boundaries from the series the paper came from, not a rounded percentage. The third is whole papers rather than topic-filtered question sets, because pacing and the decision about which question to leave are a real part of the assessment. The fourth is the correct tier.

Miss any one and the number produced is still useful for teaching, but it is not a grade estimate and should not be reported to a parent as one.

• Edexcel 1MA1 — 3 papers, 1h 30m, 80 marks each; Paper 1 non-calculator.
• AQA 8300 — 3 papers, 1h 30m, 80 marks each; Paper 1 non-calculator.
• Cambridge OCR J560 — 3 papers per tier, 1h 30m, 100 marks each; non-calculator is Paper 2 (Foundation) or Paper 5 (Higher).
• Boundaries from the same series as the paper, applied to the same tier.

The five shortcuts that ruin the result

Every one of these makes the mark go up and the information go down, which is why they are tempting. They also all fail in the same direction, so a home mock that flatters is the norm rather than the exception.

The last one deserves particular attention. Past papers are a finite resource: there are only so many, and a paper worked through in class in March cannot be used as an unseen mock in April. Keeping a list of which papers a student has already met is unglamorous and it is the difference between a mock series that measures something and one that measures recall.

• Pausing the clock, for any reason at all.
• Letting the student finish the question they were on when time was called.
• Sitting a paper the student has already worked through in class.
• Marking generously — giving a method mark for working that does not actually show the method.
• Skipping the non-calculator paper because it is the harder one to arrange.

Marking, and the number that is actually useful

Mark to the official mark scheme, including method marks, and mark strictly. The total is the least interesting output. What matters is the breakdown: which questions were attempted and abandoned, where in the paper the timing collapsed, and how many marks were lost to arithmetic on questions where the method was right.

That last figure changes what happens next more than anything else in the mock. A student losing eight marks a paper to arithmetic slips does not need more topic teaching; they need a checking routine and faster number work. A student losing eight marks by not attempting the last two questions has a pacing problem. Same mark, different term's work.

How we run them

We sit a full timed series before advising on tier, because tier advice given on impression is how students end up capped at a grade 5 they were always going to beat, or entered for Higher and losing marks they could have banked. The papers decide it, not the conversation.

We keep a record per student of which papers have been used in class so that a mock is never a paper they have met. It is the least interesting piece of administration in the programme and it is the one that keeps the numbers honest.