Mocks vs Exam GCSE grade boundaries

On my maths mock I did bad.. all I was told is that I got a 3. This was really demotivating for me because I need a 6. I didn't even pass the mock.
(I only did paper 4 and 5)

However, out of curiosity I check the grade boundaries and I got a 4 in both? Does that mean that the mocks will have high grade boundaries? and the actual exam will have the 'normal' boundaries?

On my maths mock I did bad.. all I was told is that I got a 3. This was really demotivating for me because I need a 6. I didn't even pass the mock.
(I only did paper 4 and 5)

However, out of curiosity I check the grade boundaries and I got a 4 in both? Does that mean that the mocks will have high grade boundaries? and the actual exam will have the 'normal' boundaries?

i did this years maths higher ocr paper

but it's a bit confusing on what frame boundaries they used... are the grade boundaries higher to scare us or?

By "this year", I assume you must mean last year (2023) - last summer specifically? You say you did Paper 4 and Paper 5, and that when you checked the notional boundaries (presumably from the OCR web site) you reached the grade 4 boundary but were awarded a grade 3 in your mock. Were you quite close to the grade 3 / grade 4 boundary? If so, I may have an explanation.

Obviously in actual exams, grades aren't awarded per paper - they're only awarded for the whole exam. However, OCR publish what that call "notional" grade boundaries per paper for when someone sits just one or two of them, perhaps in a mock. Paper 6 was harder than Paper 4 or Paper 5, so it impacted the overall grade boundaries - which is perhaps what you looked at.

For a grade 4 in Paper 4 you'd have needed 14/100 (14%). The same is true in Paper 5. However, because Paper 6 was harder, its boundaries were lower, so the overall grade 4 boundary (across all three papers) was 39/300 (13%). So if you were around the 13% / 14% mark, this might be the reason for the difference.

Or, as you say, your school may have "tweaked" the boundaries in an attempt to encourage you to work harder!