I don’t think mocks are for everyone, or necessary – as KCG has said, her boys did perfectly well without and there are many who do (including some of DS’ friends), and it’s not cheap. I agree that the cohort who enter them are likely not to be the cohort your child will be up against for the real thing, they will be the children who are keen to do well (or their parents are keen!), have the work ethic, being tutored etc. And the results are likely to be skewed to the children who are doing the provider's tutoring.
But our experience was that it was worth it. DS did a couple of mocks, one in the May and one in the June before the real thing in the September. For each one, the company ran 3 sittings, each with probably 150 odd children at each sitting, so they must have made a fortune. But DS said in some ways, having had no experience previously of taking exams other than SATS in the classroom, it was the most helpful prep he did. It was very similar to the real thing in terms of being on a Saturday, and getting experience of that number of people, sitting in an exam room, the practicalities mentioned by Helen0209 and, even though they were only mocks, some extremely stressed out children and learning how to cope with that. After sitting the real thing, DS said he was glad he’d done the mocks as he was better prepared as to what to expect.
He got a couple of silly errors out of the way too – turning over two pages at one point and not realising, so completely missed out two sections, and running out of time in one section to even guess/randomly complete the boxes for the last questions.
So all in all, we were happy to have done them.
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