GCSE Revision Guidance: PPEs

PPEs are Pre-Public Examinations (or GCSE mock exams). They are sat by students three times before the final national GCSE window begins in May of Year 11.

The first set of PPEs are taken in June of Year 10, after the first academic year of GCSE study. This is then followed by two more practice windows in November and February of Year 11.

A PPE exam week means that the normal school timetable is suspended for the week. Students will take two exams a day, following all of the strict examination protocol in the school hall. Every subject will set past GCSE examination papers and use examination board mark schemes and national grade boundaries to make the experience as close to the real thing as possible.

Preparation for GCSE examinations begins in Year 7, with assessment demands woven within the curriculum to allow students to learn and retain vital subject knowledge for their subject areas over time. At Culcheth High School, we mark all QMAs (Quality Marked Assessments) in percentages, for this very reason.

In Year 11, final GCSE grades are awarded by the examination boards on the basis of a student’s percentage of accuracy on each exam paper. At Culcheth we therefore push our students, from Year 7, to always look for the improvements they can make on assessments and to work hard to address the areas they lack confidence in for a particular assessment. The message is a simple one: the higher the percentage of accuracy they can achieve on an examination paper, the higher their overall GCSE grades will be. 

PPEs are designed to help students to make gradual progress and experience the demands of revision and preparation that they will meet in the run up to their final examinations. PPEs are useful milestones to practise different revision and study strategies, and build the resilience required to make the final preparations in Year 11.

PPEs can only assess a small proportion of the curriculum in each subject. Therefore, to support students and parents we always issue a PPE revision checklist before the examinations. This means that students can focus their revision efforts on areas of the curriculum they know will come up and allows for a more productive process.