Tag Archives: gcse maths past papers by topic

Why It’s Easier Than Ever To Achieve Your Target Grade In GCSE Maths

5 Replies

I recently wrote a report called: Why it’s Easier Than Ever To Achieve Your Target Grade In GCSE Maths…

If you haven’t read it yet, you can download it from here >>

The great news is, it’s got even easier, particularly for Edexcel students.

The gap between paper 1 and paper 2 this year is almost 2 weeks!

Unlike previous years, when there were only 3/4 days between both papers.

Not only that, but you have a week-off in between.

This means you have a greater chance of maximising your score in each paper.

You should stop all revision for paper 2 as from today and focus solely on paper 1 until you’ve taken it on the 26th May 2016.

Then immediately after, focus on paper 2.

I have advised my tuition students to do the same.

Don’t revise any topics that feature in paper 2 until you’ve completed paper 1.

If you’re unsure on what kind of topics will feature in each paper, take a look at the lists below:

GCSE Maths Higher Non Calculator Topics

GCSE Maths Higher Calculator Topics

Focus on your areas of weakness too. These are questions you got wrong consistently in your practice papers.

Use my past papers by topic to target specific areas.

Save one or two practice papers (ideally the 2015 papers) for the penultimate day i.e. the day before the actual exam.

This is what I like to call the ‘the acid test’. Whatever you get in these papers is what you’ll get in the real thing.

If you’ve already gone over them, don’t worry. You can always go over them a second time around.

If you’re a Edexcel student, I highly recommend that you download my ‘GCSE Maths Tricks of the Trade’ guide too.

What I’ve noticed over the last few years (as a result of face to face tuition) is there are a number of key areas that a typical student would drop marks on.

It is difficult to go through all of them in this blog post. That’s why I documented them into a guide.

Going through this guide alone will boost your final result by one whole letter grade >>

I have given you everything you need to achieve your target grade in GCSE Maths this year.

You really don’t have any excuses.

Go out there and smash it! 🙂

If you have any questions about revision, leave a comment below.

Good luck.

Jeevan S.

How You Should Be Revising As You Approach May

2 Replies

At this late stage in your revision schedule, you should not be revising from any textbooks or revision guides. Instead, past papers should be at the forefront of your revision. Complete as many past papers as possible, especially the most recent ones (June 2012 and onwards) as they will look almost identical to the ones you’re about to take.

Use your revision guides and textbooks as a reference point in case you need to read up on extra material but even so, try to avoid referring to heaps of information. This is because you have a number of exams in quick succession. Mark schemes and cheat sheets/notes pages usually work best. Cheat sheets are only a few pages long that contain the most important concepts/formulas of the syllabus.

When you complete those past papers, what you’ll notice is that you’ll have weaker and stronger areas. You should obviously dedicate more time to your weaknesses. Target these areas by answering a few more exam questions on these topics. This is how you’ll bump up your final grades from D’s and C’s to B’s and A’s.

If you feel you don’t have any good summary notes or cannot find any exam questions by topic, don’t worry. Over the last year or so, I’ve been compiling my own notes and resources for students I teach on a one-to-one basis. It’s taken me a long time to put together but I wanted to make sure you had all the best resources at your disposal. Here they are below. I would advise that you go through all of them and pick the ones that are most useful to you.

GCSE Maths Key Notes

GCSE Maths Past Papers By Topic