All students should ensure they have their own mathematical equipment and know how to use it, especially a calculator. As the exams approach make sure that you have a scientific calculator and know how to use it. Two thirds of the marks come from the calculator papers so it is important students can use their calculator to best affect in the exams. 

Students should familiarise themselves with the formula sheets (attached as appendices) so they know which formula are given and which are not.  

Students should be practicing their exam technique and ensuring they are confident answering longer answer questions as well as just demonstrating skills. To best revise maths students need to be practicing answering GCSE questions for most of their revision. Students can do this in several ways: 

• Maths Watch has an option to complete past paper which staff will be setting as homework 
• Mathsgenie.co.uk contains all the back catalogued past papers along with solutions to each paper 
• Maths Genie also has individual topic question packs for revision 
• Students can login to Pinpoint learning to see their own personalised revision matrices. Students should see their class teacher for their individual login. 

To move your current grade of a 3 to an actual grade 4 

• To secure the grade 4 on foundation students need to ensure they are confident with the grade 4 content as well as all of the content from grades 1, 2 and 3 (included as an appendix).  
• Students can achieve a grade 4 on higher or foundation tier. 
• Students who are aiming for a grade 4 on higher should ensure they are confident on the grade 4 as they will not be able to pick up marks from the grades 1-3 content explicitly.  
• However, students sitting higher are expected to use these skills to answer questions even if they are not explicitly examined. 

To move your current grade of a 4 to an actual grade 5 

• Similar to a grade 4, students aiming for this grade need to know all the content up to and including grade 5.  
• Students aiming for a grade 5 on foundation need to be confident they can access the entirety of this paper and should particularly focus on ensuring they are precise and accurate in their calculations so do not drop marks early in the paper.  
• Students aiming for a grade 5 on higher should again consider that the grade 1-3 content is assumed knowledge on the higher paper so should ensure they can use those skills to answer questions.  

To achieve the highest grades 

• Students who are aiming for a grade 6 or above need to be secure with the content attached and also confident in tackling longer answer questions. The higher paper has very few short answer questions so exam technique here is absolutely key; students should use the resources listed above to practice as many exam questions as possible to ensure the best chance of success on this paper.