What should you expect from a mock exam?

I've read recurring misconceptions about mock exams. The misconception is that the mock exam exists to "prove" - or at least offer very convincing evidence - to anxious parents that their child will pass the real 11+ exam and, for this reason, the anxious parent can be less anxious and enter some kind of blissful cruise-control between the start of summer and its end.

But this is not what mock tests are for. And viewing mock tests in such a way is likely to create more anxiety and uncertainty on top of the anxiety and uncertainty that most parents feel about the eleven plus.

It is my opinion that this is what mock tests are for:

1) To provide evidence of your child's current strengths and weaknesses. This evidence is an opportunity for a parent to make an informed and strategic decision about their child's eleven plus education between now and the exam. If a child is not up to par in NVR, isn't it better to know it now than not to know it until results day? Before your child took a mock exam, you were taking your journey towards the exam without a map. Now you have a map with a route clearly marked on it. It is a good thing to have a map with a route clearly marked on it.

2) To provide your child experience of exams. Possessing the academic ability to succeed at the eleven plus is one thing, but it's not much use if a child implodes with the weight of their own distress (it happens) in an exam because the exam situation is unfamiliar and they are afraid of it.

Becoming familiar with the big hall, the isolated desks, the complete silence, the impossibility of asking a parent or a friend what to do, the ticking clock (metaphorical and literal)... all these things can be distressing and require getting used to.

Even the little details about exams are important to learn: remembering stationery; the necessity of a transparent pencil case; the requirement to remove the label from the bottle of water...

The familiarity - and certainty and relative calmness that comes from it - could itself be worth a percent or two on the real exam day, and could even give a child a decisive advantage over a less mock-exam-hardened child.

There is a third advantage, if not purpose, to mock exams:

3) To give children a necessary shock. Children are children and don't always have the most accurate perceptions about their place in the great order of things. Some children are overconfident. They get told by their teachers at school that they're brilliant; they get told by their parents that they're brilliant; they just happen to think themselves to be brilliant. And it is understandable that these children have an expectation that they will absolutely, definitely, certainly pass the eleven plus, for sure - because they have no point-of-reference to ground them in reality. Taking a mock test gives them a point-of-reference, a comparison, a estimation of their place in the order of things; they may find out - and often do - that their overconfidence was misplaced and that their self-perception and their mock exam score are misaligned. Now the once-overconfident and suddenly-disappointed child knows that they're rather further from a guaranteed pass than they assumed. This realisation is a good thing. It gives them a shock, a wake-up call, that they actually need to work harder and improve their knowledge before they can pass the 11+.

So, parents and carers, do not worry unduly if your child's mock exam score isn't 97%. Don't panic. Definitely don't give up. Your mock exam has given you and your child indispensable information and experience that will benefit you both in the run up to the exam and, for your child, in the exam itself.