After a bad mock: a calm plan for the weeks before the exam

Ask your child to bring the marked paper home, or ask the school if you can see it. A grade on its own tells you very little. The same grade can come from ten small slips spread across the paper, or from one topic your child has never understood. Those need completely different fixes.

Then sit down together with the paper for twenty minutes, ideally the day after the result rather than the evening it arrives. You do not need to know the subject. For each question where marks were lost, ask one thing: why did this lose marks? Write the answers down, question by question.

It helps to remember what a mock is for. Schools set mocks to find problems while there is still time to fix them. A mock may be marked strictly, or sat before the whole syllabus has been taught. A poor one is information, not a verdict.

Almost every lost mark fits one of three kinds. Go through your notes from the paper and put each lost mark into one of them.

Then count the marks in each kind. Often one kind stands out, and that tells you where the next few weeks should go.

If the term is new to you: a mark scheme is the examiner's list of the exact points that earn marks. The second kind of lost mark comes from not writing those points.

Count the weeks before the first paper, and plan by topics rather than hours. Here is a rough shape, to adjust to your child and the time you have:

• First third of the time: the did-not-know topics. Relearn one topic at a time, then practise questions on it from many past papers. Start with the topics that cost the most marks.
• Middle third: keep drilling weak topics, and mark every written answer against the official mark scheme. This is where the knew-it-but-did-not-write-it marks come back.
• Final third: whole past papers on the real time limit, marked honestly. Every lost mark goes on a list, and the list is cleared before the next paper.

If time was the main problem, bring timed papers forward: one a week per subject from the start.

Keep the plan to what your child can manage alongside school. Two focused sessions a day that actually happen are worth more than six planned hours that do not. Our guide on how to practise past papers sets out the method step by step, and the guide to command words helps with the second kind of lost mark.

Your child probably feels worse about the result than you do. So start with the plan, not the disappointment.

• Ask what they think went wrong before you say what you think.
• Talk about the paper and the three kinds of lost mark, not about the grade or about other children.
• Agree the plan together, and let your child choose the order of topics where the order does not matter.
• Agree one short check each week at a fixed time, instead of asking every evening.
• Leave out warnings that it may be too late. They add fear, and fear does not help anyone revise.

If your child seems very anxious, withdrawn or is not sleeping, talk to the school or a counsellor as well. The exam matters, but it is not the only thing that does.

After a bad mock, many parents think about changing tutor or adding a coaching centre. Before you change anything, ask the current tutor or teacher three questions:

1. Do you mark written work against the official mark scheme?
2. Which topics are my child's weakest? The answer should match what the mock showed.
3. Do you set whole past papers on the clock?

If the answers are yes, the problem may lie in the hours between lessons rather than the lessons themselves. More practice may help more than a new teacher. Switching late also has a cost: a new tutor needs weeks to learn how your child works, and there are not many weeks left. Adding practice alongside the current tutor is usually less disruptive than starting again.

If the answers are no, a change may be right. Better to make it now than a month from now.

Sometimes the honest conclusion is that one subject will not be ready in time. Raise it with the school early, and decide together whether your child should sit it now or later.

For dates, entries and fees, ask the school, the British Council or your exam centre. They set the sittings, deadlines and fees; a course provider does not. Our guide to resitting an O Level or International GCSE covers how to decide and how to prepare differently the second time.

Eudika Learn's past-paper practice is built around the three kinds of lost mark:

• Topic drills pull questions on one topic from past papers across many years.
• Written answers are checked against the official mark scheme, point by point.
• Timed papers run on the real time limit and hand in when the clock reaches zero. Mock tests let your child build a timed paper from chosen topics and sittings.
• After each paper, the results page lists the topics scored under half, and the practice history keeps a running list of weak topics in each subject.

If your child already has a tutor, keep them, and take the list of questions your child still does not understand to the next session. If your child needs a teacher and a fixed time, live classes are small groups in Dhaka time, and the first three classes are free. And if a resit does follow, anyone whose Eudika access ended in the past 12 months gets 30% off a future sitting.