Extra Time in GCSE Mocks 2026-27: The Mock Script Is the Evidence

JCQ’s access arrangements rules require a genuine sample of mock exam or internal test scripts as evidence for a 25% extra time application processed from 1 September 2025 onwards — the mock is no longer just practice, it is part of the proof a school submits to the exam board. For the 2025-26 exam series, modified papers must be applied for by 31 January 2026, and every other access arrangement, including 25% extra time, by 21 March 2026.

Why the Mock Is the Evidence, Not a Formality

Most guidance written for parents treats a mock as a rehearsal for extra time already agreed for the summer exams. JCQ’s own regulations reverse that: its published guidance states that, “except for GCSE resits, for applications for 25% extra time processed from 1 September 2025 onwards, in addition to the completed form there must be: a sample of internal school tests/mock exam papers across relevant subjects showing the application of 25% extra time; comments and observations from teaching staff.” The mock script itself, marked and dated, now has to travel with the application — not just a teacher’s description of how a student normally works.

The most-read page on this exact question, Save My Exams’ guide to GCSE extra time, gets close and then stops short. Its own FAQ says: “Yes, once your school has evidence that you need extra time, you should get it for mock exams too. In fact, using extra time in mocks and internal tests is part of proving it’s your ‘normal way of working’.” That is true, but it answers the question the wrong way round. A mock is not simply where extra time gets practised once a school already holds evidence — since September 2025, the marked mock script is very often the evidence itself, the actual document a SENCo attaches to the application. Whether a family can bring that script home afterwards to look at is a separate question, covered in our guide to taking a GCSE mock paper home.

One carve-out is worth flagging so it is not mistaken for the general rule: JCQ’s own wording opens with “except for GCSE resits” — a student sitting a GCSE resit is not caught by this particular mock-evidence requirement in the same way a first-time Year 11 or Year 10 candidate is. Everything else on this page, including the two deadlines below, concerns a standard first-sitting GCSE application, not a resit.

The Deadline Everyone Gets Wrong

Access arrangements do not share a single cut-off. For the 2025-26 exam series, JCQ splits the calendar in two: modified papers, such as large print or Braille versions, must be applied for by 31 January 2026, while every other arrangement — 25% extra time, a reader, a scribe, a word processor or supervised rest breaks — has a later deadline of 21 March 2026. A parent who has only heard about “the January deadline” can wrongly assume extra time has already been missed for the year, when the arrangement that actually covers most students runs almost two months longer.

Source: Disability Rights UK's published deadline table (2025-26) and OCR's key-dates document (2026-27).

Two things are worth separating from that table. First, Disability Rights UK’s own published guidance mislabels its own table — it introduces the same 2026 dates as being “For the Summer 2025 exam series,” a full year adrift of the dates it then gives, and its FAQ never quotes JCQ’s mock-evidence wording directly. If a specialist charity’s own published dates can carry that kind of labelling error, a date copied from a forum thread or a second-hand summary is worth treating with the same caution. Second, and more important: as of 10 September 2026, JCQ’s own knowledge-hub page was still headed “Valid from 1 September 2025 to 31 August 2026. Updated March 2026” — JCQ had not yet published a 2026-27 edition of its access arrangements regulations. The 2026-27 dates above come from OCR’s own published key-dates document, which tracks the same 31 January / 21 March split forward a year; a family applying against the 2026-27 cycle should still confirm the live date with their own exam centre once JCQ’s new edition is published, rather than relying on any single site, including this one.

The practical consequence of the split is what trips parents up most: the arrangement almost every family is actually asking about — 25% extra time — sits in the LATER of the two bands, alongside readers, scribes, word processors and supervised rest breaks. Only modified papers, a much smaller and more specialised category covering formats such as large print or Braille, fall under the earlier January cut-off. A parent who reads about “the deadline” in general terms, without checking which band their child’s arrangement sits in, risks either missing the January date for something that never needed it, or wrongly assuming March has already passed.

What the Evidence Actually Has to Look Like

Before the evidence question even arises, JCQ sets a numerical bar for who can be considered for 25% extra time at all. Part 2 of Form 8 must confirm the candidate has, in JCQ’s own words, “at least: two below average standardised scores of 84 or less; or one below average standardised score of 84 or less and one low average standardised score (85-89).” That is expressed as a standardised score, never as a percentile. Some parent-facing guides convert it into a rough percentile for readability, but the figure a SENCo actually records on the form, and the one that decides whether an application can proceed, is the standardised score itself — so it is worth asking a school for that number directly rather than a converted equivalent.

JCQ’s supplementary guidance is more concrete on the evidence question itself than any competitor page reviewed for this article. It gives a worked example: “A GCSE candidate studying nine subjects. One marked assessment in a subject requiring extended writing like English or History, plus one marked assessment in a numerical subject like maths or science and one marked assessment in another subject such as a short answer MFL paper.” Three marked scripts, not nine — JCQ is explicit elsewhere in the same guidance that “the focus should be on the quality of the evidence and not quantity. A small, representative sample is sufficient rather than a full subject portfolio.”

The second requirement is procedural rather than academic: the script itself has to show, physically, that extra time was used. JCQ names the standard method directly — “a copy of a marked internal test or mock exam script showing the use of 25% extra time (i.e. a change of pen colour or font to show the additional time).” A student who starts a mock in black ink and switches to blue partway through, or highlights the extra-time section on a typed script, is creating exactly the record a SENCo needs to attach to the application. One self-identified exams officer, posting on a parent forum, described applying the same rule from the classroom side this year: “We’re going to ask students in our cohort to change coloured pens when they get to extra time” — an independent, if informal, sign that JCQ’s written rule is what schools are actually doing.

What Parents Say

DP

Deborah Prior

★★★★★

Confidence and progress

My son was low in confidence after COVID and the gaps in learning were building up. Using this service helped plug those gaps, rebuild confidence, and improve his ability to learn properly again.

NI

Nicola

★★★★★

Amazing tutors!

We arranged maths and English tuition ahead of GCSEs and both tutors were brilliant. My daughter's grades improved, and by results day she achieved two grades higher than in her mock exams.

S

Saifan Khan

★★★★★

Great Teaching and Focused Learning

I attended an English bootcamp with Leading Tuition and the experience was excellent. The teacher gave focused attention to the small group while keeping the lessons interactive and engaging.

When It’s ADHD, Autism or Anxiety, Not a Specific Learning Difficulty

A March 2026 amendment changed the order schools are expected to work through for one specific group. JCQ’s own key-changes summary states it plainly: “Where a candidate has an impairment other than a learning difficulty, the SENCo should consider the option of supervised rest breaks before making an application for 25% extra time.” The same page explains why, noting the change “may better address the needs of many neurodivergent candidates such as those with ADHD, ASD as well as many of those with a medical condition and mental health needs.”

The practical effect is that a candidate whose difficulty is ADHD, autism, or an anxiety-related or medical condition — rather than a specific learning difficulty such as dyslexia — may now be steered towards supervised rest breaks first, with 25% extra time considered afterwards if rest breaks do not meet the need. Tes reported the same shift from the school side of the process: “there is a move towards supervised rest breaks, with JCQ stipulating that schools consider this arrangement before applying for extra time.” A parent whose child has already been offered rest breaks rather than extra time is not being refused — the school is very likely following JCQ’s own current sequence for that category of need.

This distinction matters for the evidence section above, too. A rest-breaks trial in a mock produces its own record — how many breaks, how long, and whether the candidate still completed the paper in the time available — and that record is itself part of what a SENCo weighs before deciding whether to move on to a 25% extra time application. A parent who understands the sequence can ask a more useful question than “why hasn’t my child got extra time yet”: whether rest breaks have been tried in a mock, and what the school observed when they were.

Why a Parent’s Own Comments Don’t Count as Evidence

It is a natural instinct to write to the school explaining what a child struggles with, and many parents assume that letter becomes part of the case. JCQ’s own form rules say otherwise, in one direct sentence: “Comments from parents cannot be recorded within Part 1 of Form 8 or Part 1 of Form 9.” Form 8 is the document a SENCo completes to apply for 25% extra time; a parent’s description of home life, however accurate, has no box to go in.

What actually counts is evidence the school itself holds: teaching staff’s own comments and observations on how a student normally works, the standardised test scores a SENCo records, and — since September 2025 — the marked mock or internal-test scripts described above. A parent’s useful role is not to submit a personal account but to ask the right question of the school: has this been tested, is there a mock script on file showing extra time in use, and has a SENCo actually started the Form 8 process. Chasing those three answers moves an application forward; writing a letter to the exams office does not.

What Happens If a Mock Doesn’t Get the Adjustment: The Gov.uk “Record the Reason” Rule

A less-known lever sits in Ofqual’s own resilience guidance, written originally to help schools collect fair evidence of performance if exams are ever disrupted, but it applies just as directly to an ordinary autumn mock round. It states: “The same reasonable adjustments that will be made for disabled students taking exams in the summer should, where possible, be applied to the assessments… Records should be made of the adjustments and the reasons for them. The centre should record the reason why any reasonable adjustment was not made.”

That is guidance addressed to centres about how they gather and record evidence, not a standalone right a parent can invoke directly with JCQ — but it gives a parent a specific, useful question if a mock goes ahead without an agreed adjustment: not “why wasn’t this done,” but “what reason has the school recorded for not applying it this time.” Ofqual’s own guidance expects an answer to exist on file, even when the adjustment itself was missed on the day.

The guidance was written for a different worry — keeping mock and coursework evidence reliable enough to stand in for a summer exam that might, in some future year, be disrupted or cancelled — rather than as a rule about individual fairness in an ordinary autumn mock round. That context does not weaken the specific line quoted above: whatever the guidance was written to prevent, the instruction to record a reason when an adjustment is skipped applies to any mock a centre runs, disruption or not, which is exactly why it is worth a parent knowing it exists.

Frequently Asked Questions