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 £3.60 : £2.40 as a ratio in its simplest form.
- 2.A gym increases its membership price by 1/5. The original price is £60. Work out the new price.
- 3.In a class, 1/3 of the pupils are girls. There are 12 girls in the class. Work out how many pupils are in the class.
- 4.A spreadsheet shows that 812 − 397 = 315. Work out an estimate for 812 − 397, by rounding each number to the nearest 100, to check whether the spreadsheet's answer is reasonable.
- 5.Work out 250 ÷ 1000.
- 6.A restaurant adds a service charge of 15% to a bill of £120. Work out the service charge.
- 7.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.
- 8.After a 20% discount, a jacket costs £48. Work out the original price of the jacket.
- 9.Isla and her brother share £60 in the ratio 1:2. Work out Isla's share.
- 10.The angles of a triangle are in the ratio 2:3:4. Work out the size of the smallest angle.
- 11.Work out an estimate for 6.4 × 3.9, by rounding each number to the nearest whole number.
- 12.A charity raffle sells 240 tickets at £1.85 each. 40% of the money raised is given to a local hospital. Work out how much money the hospital receives.
- 13.Work out −6 × (−3).
- 14.A gardener mixes 300 ml of plant feed concentrate with 1.2 litres of water to make a spray. Write the ratio of concentrate to water in its simplest form.
- 15.Write 400 g : 1.5 kg as a ratio in its simplest form.
- 16.Priya invests £750 in a savings account that pays simple interest. After 3 years, the account contains £840. Work out the annual rate of simple interest.
- 17.A carpenter has a plank of wood 4.8 m long. She cuts off 3 pieces, each 0.9 m long, to make shelves. Work out the length of wood remaining.
- 18.Write 0.45 as a fraction in its simplest form.
- 19.In a recipe the mass of chocolate to the mass of milk is in the ratio 1:4. Amelia uses 200 g of milk. Work out the mass of chocolate she needs.
- 20.Hannah works out 3.1 × 19.6 on her calculator and writes down 6.076. Work out an estimate for 3.1 × 19.6, by rounding each number to 1 significant figure.
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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