GCSE maths practice

MathsUK is a practice site for GCSE mathematics in England. Every question is filed against a DfE content statement — the same 97 statements every exam board must cover — so you can practise a specific topic rather than working through an undifferentiated pile of questions. Each question comes with a worked answer that shows the method, not just the result.

Yes. The questions, the worked answers, the topic pages and the printable worksheets are all free to use, with no account needed to start practising.

Foundation awards grades 1 to 5 and Higher awards grades 4 to 9, and your school decides which you are entered for, usually on the strength of your mocks and classwork. If a grade 5 would be a good outcome, Foundation is normally the better entry, because the whole paper is within reach. If you are already secure at grade 5 and need a 6 or above, you need Higher. Both tiers are on this site, and the Foundation content is also part of Higher, so nothing is wasted.

Three papers per tier, each 1 hour 30 minutes and worth 80 marks, and all three carry equal weight. Paper 1 is non-calculator; Papers 2 and 3 allow a calculator. The papers are sat in Year 11 for most students. Because the three are equally weighted, the non-calculator paper matters exactly as much as the two calculator papers — which is not how most revision timetables treat it.

Yes. A formulae sheet is provided in the exam for the lifetime of the current specifications. It gives you the surface area and volume of a sphere and a cone and the kinematics formulae. It does not give you the quadratic formula, the circumference or area of a circle, Pythagoras' theorem, the trigonometric ratios, the sine rule, the cosine rule or area = ½ab sin C — those you still have to know. Our formulae page sets out all three categories: what you are given, what you must know, and what you should be able to derive.

No. Every question on MathsUK is original, written against the DfE subject content and checked before it is published. We do not host past papers, mark schemes or any other exam board material — that belongs to the awarding organisations and is available on their own sites. What we offer instead is unlimited practice on the same content, with the working shown.

All of them. The DfE sets the subject content, and Pearson Edexcel (1MA1), AQA (8300) and OCR (J560) all teach and assess it, with the same three-paper structure and the same tier system. Boards differ in how questions are worded and presented, not in what may be asked, so topic practice transfers directly. Edexcel is the largest by entries — 62.5% of summer 2025 maths entries — followed by AQA and then OCR.

Work by topic while a topic is still weak, and only move to mixed practice once it is not. Mixed practice tells you that something is wrong; topic practice tells you what. Read the worked answer even on questions you get right, do a non-calculator set at least weekly, and use the printable worksheets when you want to practise writing the working out properly rather than clicking an option.

For now, yes — phase 1 covers GCSE Foundation and Higher, which are taught across Years 10 and 11. It is equally useful for anyone resitting GCSE maths at a college or sixth form. Year 1 to Year 9 practice will follow; publishing those pages before the questions exist would only produce empty pages.

It is the largest GCSE subject in the country: 893,198 UK entries in summer 2025. Almost everyone sits it, and a great many people resit it, which is why we have built the site around the specification rather than around one school's scheme of work.