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 200 as a product of its prime factors, using index notation.
- 2.A sponsored walk raised £350 for charity. 20% of the money raised is spent on equipment. Work out how much is spent on equipment.
- 3.Write 400 g : 1.5 kg as a ratio in its simplest form.
- 4.A number, n, is a multiple of both 6 and 9. Work out the smallest possible value of n that is greater than 20.
- 5.A metal alloy is made from copper and tin in the ratio 7:3. Work out the mass of tin in 250 g of the alloy.
- 6.A pack contains 20 stickers. Noah gives 1/5 of the pack to his sister. Work out how many stickers he gives away.
- 7.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.
- 8.Write 0.25 as a percentage.
- 9.In a science lesson Priya has 10 litres of a solution that is 30% salt. She adds water to make a solution that is 20% salt. Work out how many litres of water she adds.
- 10.Work out an estimate for 8,900 ÷ 29, by rounding each number to 1 significant figure.
- 11.Work out 3 + 4 × 2²
- 12.Jack buys 3 books, each costing £4.25, and pays with a £20 note. Work out how much change he receives.
- 13.A shade of paint is made by mixing blue paint and white paint. To make 5 litres of the shade, 2 litres of blue paint is used and the rest is white paint. Write the ratio of blue paint to white paint in its simplest form.
- 14.A roll of ribbon is 8.4 m long. Ribbon is cut into pieces that are each 0.6 m long. Work out how many complete pieces can be cut from the roll.
- 15.A jug of squash is made by mixing water and syrup in the ratio 6:1. Nia wants to make 8.4 litres of squash. Work out how much syrup she needs, in litres.
- 16.Write the ratio 27 : 45 in its simplest form.
- 17.After a 20% discount, a jacket costs £48. Work out the original price of the jacket.
- 18.A charity shop and a school share collection-box money in the ratio 5 : 8. The charity shop receives £47.50. Work out how much the school receives.
- 19.A rectangular plywood panel measures 2.4 m by 0.75 m. Work out the area of the panel in square metres, giving your answer as a fraction in its simplest form.
- 20.At an animal shelter, the ratio of cats to dogs is 2:5. There are 18 more dogs than cats. Work out the number of cats.
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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