Tag Archives: target grade in gcse maths

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

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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.

Why You’ll Miss Out On Your Target Grade In GCSE Maths

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I didn’t want to start off this blog post in a negative light but I had to warn you about this small issue that will prevent you from achieving your target grade…

Nobody is perfect. We all make mistakes, including myself. It’s part of human nature. In an exam, it’s easy to make mistakes. The atmosphere is tense and you’re under pressure.

Maths is a unique subject because, unlike most other subjects, there is only one correct answer. As part of your solution, you carry out some working but this all leads to a single answer. Now, if you make a mistake early on in your working, it will follow through and your final answer will be incorrect. This is why it’s so easy to make silly mistakes and lose marks in your GCSE maths exam.

Convince yourself now that you will make silly mistakes in your maths exam because it will happen. I’ve marked many student’s practice papers in the past (as a result of 1-to-1 tutoring) and the number of marks lost due to silly mistakes can be as high as 10% of the overall score. This means you could lose up to 10 marks (usually the papers are out of 100) just through silly mistakes.

Here comes the important bit. Let’s suppose you are striving for a ‘B’ grade in your GCSE maths exam. If you aim to scrape a B grade, you’ll miss out due to the silly mistakes you’re bound to make. This happens in most cases. That’s why you should aim for a score that is, at least, 10% greater than the grade boundary. If you need to score 50 marks to get a ‘B’, you should aim for a score of at least 60. This extra 10 marks act as a safety margin in case you happen to make those silly mistakes in the real thing. Even better, you should aim for the next grade up – A. Not only does it guarantee the ‘B’ grade but it also raises your aspirations.

There you have it. That’s how you can almost guarantee your target grade in GCSE maths. It’s a simple rule of thumb yet it’s very powerful. In my GCSE Maths Revision System, I advise my students to, not only aim for just 60 or 70 marks in their exam, but to strive for 100% and no less. This is because I believe students are much more intelligent than they think. It’s just external influences that make them think otherwise. However, scoring 100% is a different ball game altogether and to achieve that, you’ll need to follow all of my guidelines in my GCSE Maths Revision System.