What happens when: Years 10 to 13, term by term

Schools set their own calendars, so the mock weeks and coursework deadlines below are the usual pattern rather than your child’s dates; the school’s own calendar and the exam timetables have those.

GCSE courses usually start in Year 10, although some schools start them in Year 9. Most GCSEs are assessed by exams at the end of Year 11, but some subjects include work marked by teachers during the course (non-exam assessment), and each course’s specification says which parts. Year 10 usually ends with school exams in the summer, often the first time your child sits papers in exam conditions, and some schools use them to choose a Foundation or Higher tier or a set.

What you can do: find out which subjects have coursework and when it is due, and if you think your child may need extra time or other help in exams, raise it with the school’s SENCo in Year 10, because an arrangement has to be their normal way of working before the school applies for it (the extra time guide explains).

The autumn term is when sixth forms and colleges hold open evenings and take applications, each with its own deadline and the GCSE grades it asks for. Mocks usually fall between late November and January, and the mock exams guide says what a mock grade does and does not tell you. Coursework is finished in the spring, and the exams run from mid May to late June.

GCSE results come out on 19 August 2027. In England your child can leave school on the last Friday in June if they will be 16 by the end of the summer holidays, but must then stay in full-time education, start an apprenticeship, or work or volunteer for 20 hours or more a week alongside part-time education or training until 18. A student without a grade 4 in English or maths keeps studying it after 16 (resits and remarks).

What you can do: go to the sixth form or college open evenings in the autumn with your child, ask to see the marked mock papers rather than only the grades, and put the exam timetable for their subjects into the family calendar.

A level courses start in September. AS levels are now separate qualifications whose results do not count towards the A level, and A levels are assessed mainly by exams at the end of the two years. Many schools hold exams at the end of Year 12, and their results often feed the predicted grades that go on a university application, so they matter more than they look.

The spring and summer are for choosing university courses and going to open days, and UCAS opens applications for the next year in mid May. Medicine and dentistry applicants sit the UCAT in the summer, and medical schools look for experience of working with people, which need not be in a hospital. The calendar for parents of Years 12 and 13 has the application month by month.

What you can do: ask how the school sets predicted grades and when, and help plan the open days, which mostly fall in the summer holidays and early autumn.

The autumn is the university application: the 15 October deadline for Oxford, Cambridge and most medicine, the tests some courses ask for in October, and interviews for some courses in December. The main UCAS deadline is in mid January, mocks are often in January too, and offers arrive over the winter and spring. Coursework for A levels is finished in the spring, since schools send the marks to the boards by mid May.

The A level exams run from mid May to late June, and results come out on 12 August 2027, when UCAS shows whether each university place is confirmed. A student who misses an offer, or does better than expected, can use Clearing.

What you can do: know the school’s own application deadline, which comes before UCAS’s, keep January free of anything that can move, and plan to be around on results morning.