For teachers: finding papers your students have not already seen

6 min read · updated 10 October 2026

The problem with the obvious papers

A mock is only diagnostic if the class has not met the questions before. The difficulty is that the papers most likely to have been worked through are exactly the ones you would reach for first: the last two or three sittings, in the main series, for the current specification. By the spring term, a conscientious class has usually done all of them.

Set one anyway and the results tell you who has a good memory rather than who is ready.

Where the unseen papers are

• R papers. Replacement papers set for other time zones, marked with an R in the code — 4MB1/01R, WCH12/01R. Same specification, same standard, same format, and far less worked through because they are harder to find. These are the single best source of a genuinely unseen mock.
• October and January sittings. Most revision concentrates on the May/June series. The smaller sittings are complete papers of equal quality and much less used.
• Older sittings of the current specification. A paper from four or five years ago is still current-specification but outside the range most students download.
• Previous-specification papers, used selectively. Not ideal as a whole mock, but an excellent source of individual questions on topics that carried over.

Every one of those is on this site, listed by sitting and labelled with its code, so you can see at a glance which generation a paper belongs to.

Building a mock in twenty minutes

If a whole paper will not work — the class has seen them, or you want to target particular topics — assembling one is quicker than it sounds.

• Pick a paper to use as the backbone, so the structure and timing are realistic.
• Swap out the questions your class has already done, taking replacements from the same unit in a different sitting. Match the marks, so the total and the timing hold.
• Pull the matching sections from each mark scheme as you go, rather than at the end. This is the step that eats an evening if you leave it.
• Note the grade boundaries from each source sitting. Boundaries move every session, so a composite paper needs a judgement call — using the average of the boundaries from the papers you drew on is defensible and quick.

The mark schemes are on the same page as every paper here, which removes most of the hunting.

Marking and reporting

Raw marks mean little to a student and less to a parent. Converting them to a grade needs that session's boundaries, and this is where honest reporting usually breaks down — percentages get converted by feel, and the predicted grades that follow are a guess with a number attached.

The grade boundary calculator on this site uses published boundaries, so a mock mark can be converted consistently rather than by instinct. For a composite paper, be open with students that the grade is indicative — they handle that honesty better than a confident number that later turns out to be wrong.

What to give students afterwards

The script back with marks on it is worth less than most of us hope. What changes behaviour is the list: which marks were lost to content not known, which to command words misread, which to time. Ask students to produce that list themselves from their own script, and the mock becomes a revision plan instead of a verdict.

Every paper here is free, with no account, so students can be pointed straight at the ones they need to redo.