20 questions with no calculator: the four operations, fractions, percentages, order of operations, factors and estimation.
✏️ Paper 1 non-calculator warm-up — Foundation
Paper 1 is worth exactly as much as each calculator paper, and it is the one most Foundation students practise least. This sheet is a warm-up for it: twenty questions drawn from the number and ratio statements that turn up on the non-calculator paper year after year — column arithmetic with decimals and negatives, adding and subtracting fractions, percentages of amounts, priority of operations, factors and multiples, and estimating by rounding to one significant figure. Do it with a pen and nothing else. Twenty-five minutes is about right, but do not stop early if you need longer; the point is to find out which of these have quietly gone rusty, not to score well. Mark it, then go back to the topic page for whichever one cost you the most.
- 1.Write 1/5 as a percentage.
- 2.A jacket normally costs £65. In a sale it is reduced by 20%, and the shop then takes a further £5 off at the till. Work out the final price.
- 3.At a bus station one bus leaves every 6 minutes and another leaves every 9 minutes. The two buses leave together at the start of the day. Work out how long it is until they next leave together.
- 4.Which of these ratios is already written in its simplest form?
- 5.Write down a prime number between 30 and 40.
- 6.Work out 50% of 60.
- 7.A concert hall has 300 seats. 20% of the seats are in the balcony. Work out how many of the seats are in the balcony.
- 8.A bag contains 7 red counters and 15 blue counters. Write down the ratio of red counters to blue counters in its simplest form.
- 9.A company's turnover this year is £180,000. Last year's turnover was £120,000. Write down this year's turnover as a percentage of last year's turnover.
- 10.The highest common factor of two numbers is 4 and their lowest common multiple is 60. One of the numbers is 20. Work out the other number.
- 11.A tank contains 120 litres of water. Water is drained out at a rate of 8 litres per minute for 6 minutes, and then a hose adds 15 litres. Work out how much water is left in the tank.
- 12.A cinema has 21 rows of seats with 29 seats in each row. Work out an estimate for the number of people the cinema can hold, by rounding each number to 1 significant figure.
- 13.Write the ratio 2 : 1/4 as a ratio of whole numbers in its simplest form.
- 14.A jar contains 24 green sweets and 16 orange sweets. Write the ratio of green sweets to orange sweets in its simplest form.
- 15.Write 75p : £1.50 as a ratio of whole numbers in its simplest form.
- 16.A fruit bowl contains 9 apples and 21 oranges. Write down the ratio of apples to oranges in its simplest form.
- 17.Put these three numbers in order of size, starting with the smallest: 3/8, 0.4, 0.35
- 18.Write 0.06 as a fraction in its simplest form.
- 19.A fruit punch is made from orange juice, pineapple juice and lemonade in the ratio 5:3:2. A jug holds 3.5 litres of punch in total. Work out the volume of pineapple juice needed.
- 20.A necklace is made using gold beads and silver beads in the ratio 7:3. There are 40 more gold beads than silver beads. Work out the total number of beads in the necklace.
What is on this worksheet?
The sheet holds 20 questions drawn from the MathsUK bank — the content areas covered: Number, Ratio, proportion and rates of change (statements N2, N3, N4, N10, N12, N14, R4, R5, R9). It is pitched at GCSE Foundation and takes about 25 minutes to work through in full. It is built for independent practice, with full answers at the end for self-marking.
How to use the sheet well
- Print it or open it on screen — both work. Printing is A4; the screen view fits phones and tablets.
- Do all 20 questions before checking — about 25 minutes is the guide, but there is no time pressure.
- Check the answers — press “Show answers” or print the answer page separately.
- Redo the questions you got wrong — twice as effective as doing 20 fresh ones.
- “New questions” — builds a fresh sheet on the same statements, so you can practise again without repeats.
Why this sheet helps
MathsUK worksheets use questions graded by difficulty and a fair spread of correct-answer positions (the answer is not always (a)) — so the student really has to think about each question rather than guess a pattern. Every question is tagged to a DfE content statement and checked before it enters the bank. The answers come with a step-by-step explanation, not just a value — so a wrong answer becomes a lesson.
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