I am a current year 11 in the exact same position and can say for a fact the higher papers are damn hard.My writing and speaking is A/A* level as I have a good memory. When it comes to those papers I manage to get E's and U's. I got all E's last and one D last year and all E's and U's this year. You can do one higher and foundation paper and still get a B my teacher said. i think I will just go for the foundation papers as the higher papers can be a bitch and my teacher said I could potentially drop to a D grade if those papers go wrong.