Maths GCSE Past Papers & Inspiration

Prepping Students for Mathematics GCSE

Considered a core subject of an excellent education, mathematics is taught to all girls at The Queen’s School from Reception to Year 11. In addition to earning a mathematics GCSE at our Cheshire-based school, many students also choose to take their mathematics A-levels here. Maths goes beyond numbers, equations, and fractions. Students with a strong mathematics foundation also develop other skills employers value, including logical thinking, problem-solving, and decision-making. We’re proud of our innovative math programme!

You can find Math GCSE Past Papers at the bottom of this page.

What Is Mathematics? What Qualifications Are Earned in This Field?

Mathematics is defined in the dictionary as the study of numbers, quantities, and space. You can study mathematics independently or in conjunction with other disciplines, such as physics or engineering. Humans have studied mathematics since ancient Greece, most notably evidenced in Euclid’s Elements. The mathematics field has evolved with new scientific discoveries and research, making it a dynamic degree to pursue. Obtaining your maths GCSE and A-level helps you learn how to approach various problems, deal with abstract concepts, conduct observational and experimental studies, and present mathematical data and conclusions. These are all skills highly sought after by leading employers.

What Careers Benefit From a Maths qualification?

Classroom experience is essential in any field, but relevant work experience is also necessary to establish key contacts and develop additional skills. Working in the banking, retail, computing, and civil service industries can be beneficial while pursuing a mathematics degree. Many advanced pupils also pursue summer internships with academic staff on interesting research projects. Math students commonly pursue the following careers after obtaining their A-levels and university degrees:

Accountants
Actuaries
Statisticians
Astronomers
Teachers
Software engineers
Investment analysts
Research or data scientists
Meteorologists
Game designers
Software testers
Sound engineers
Financial managers
Quantity surveyors
CAD technicians

Studying Important Mathematics Influencers on Social Media

Are you having difficulty convincing your children or yourself that studying mathematics can be fun and pave the way for many exciting career paths? Anybody can learn mathematics, especially when its concepts are explained in an easy-to-understand format. Popular math influencers on social media you may want to follow include:

You can find their helpful, informative videos on YouTube. If you need additional help making a maths GCSE or A-level sound enticing to your kids, talk about famous people who earned a math degree at university. This impressive list would include:

Reed Hastings (co-founder of Netflix)
Sergey Brin (co-founder of Google)
Wimbledon champion Virginia Wade
Queen guitarist Brian May
Coldplay lead guitarist Jonny Buckland,
Irish comedian Dara O Briain
American actress Teri Hatcher

Tips for Helping You Prepare for Mathematics GCSE Exams

If you could use help preparing for a mathematics GCSE or A-level exam, we’ve got you covered. Try these helpful study and exam tips:

Give yourself plenty of time during your exam by figuring out how many questions there are and how much time you should spend per question. If a question seems to take forever, skip it. Time permitting, you can go back to it when you finish the other questions.
Show your work. The human brain is visual, so drawing a diagram or labelling a graph may help you make connections and work out the equations in your mind faster. Showing your work step-by-step may seem like a pain, but it can help show your line of thought to the person grading your exam. People are often given partial marks for their approach.
Always follow the instructions by reading them carefully. Avoid rounding unless it’s requested. Some exams require exact answers to a specific decimal place.
Time permitting, check your work after you answer all the questions. If there were any you were less than confident about, sometimes it pays to put a second pair of eyes on them.
Practice makes perfect. Give yourself plenty of practice questions and ensure you know how to operate your calculator (if allowed during the exam).

Why Pursue a Maths GCSE?

The Queen’s School is proud of our proven record of success in mathematics examinations and national and local competitions. Many of our students have received regional awards in recent years, allowing us to compete in competitions organised by the Mathematical Education on Merseyside (MEM) and at the national level in the UKMT Team Challenge Competition. We’ve been ranked in the top 50 of 1,200 schools that entered this prestigious competition. Attending a girls’ school offers numerous benefits, including freedom from the stereotypes that girls can’t dominate maths, physics, astronomy, engineering, and whatever else they set their minds to achieve. We prepare our students to think independently, collaborate confidently, and aspire globally. The sky’s the limit at our esteemed school!

Revision tips and advice:

Be clear on the topics you have learned about in mathematics. For example:

What skills have you learned?
What is this skill used for?
How does it work?
Is it used in other subjects?
How should my solution be presented?

Remember that mathematics is all about solving problems. Thinking about everyday activities and how mathematics is used, will deepen your understanding. For more information about why mathematics matters, please visit the Institute for Mathematics and its applications for the latest articles on the impact of mathematics on everyday life: https://ima.org.uk/case-studies/mathematics-matters/

For internal tests, pupils are always given a list of topics with relevant past paper questions. We recommend that for mathematics, pupils complete the past paper questions and bring any questions to the maths clinic or lessons.

Following every assessment, we give pupils individual detailed feedback and identify additional tasks they can do to develop further as mathematicians. Our teachers give pupils very specific feedback from assessments and are very clear on how pupils can develop their mathematical skills and knowledge going forward.

Maths clinic runs every Tuesday and Friday lunchtime in T4. However, we are always available to help our pupils and often meet pupils individually, as and when they need help and support.

Sparx maths is also a useful tool to help revise as you can use the independent learning section or the target section to practice topics you need to master.

Regular practice is the key. Completing questions for 15 minutes every day is far more effective than completing a large block of work once a week.

For pupils sitting external examinations, we would recommend the same approach by using past paper questions. We start early with exam practice, using past paper questions as part of weekly homework, to support the daily practice approach.

Many useful external sites can be used to find additional questions on specific topics. We would use Corbett Maths and Maths Genie for GCSE. Using these sites would be in addition to resources we already share with pupils from OCR, Sparx and the Just Maths repository. All of the sites mentioned have useful help videos, alongside examination practice.

Registering Your Daughter at The Queen’s School Is Easy

Registering your daughter online to begin the Entrance Assessment process at The Queen’s School is easy. January is the main month for Entrance Assessments for our Lower and Senior Schools, but we do accept mid-year entries throughout the year. Contact us today with any questions about our courses, extracurricular activities, admissions journey, or open events. Our alumni would also be happy to discuss how your daughter can create her own unique Queen’s experience for memories that will last a lifetime.

Here you can find past papers for GCSE Maths: