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.Three business partners share a profit of £48,000 in the ratio 3:5:4. Work out how much the partner with 5 parts receives.
- 2.Work out the highest common factor of 20 and 32.
- 3.The price of a jacket increases by 50% and then decreases by 50%. Describe the overall change from the original price.
- 4.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.
- 5.Work out an estimate for 588 ÷ 31, by rounding each number to 1 significant figure.
- 6.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.
- 7.Write '3.2 million' as a number in figures.
- 8.Work out an estimate for 312 × 19, by rounding each number to 1 significant figure.
- 9.A recipe for pastry uses flour and butter in the ratio 3:2. A baker has 180 g of butter and wants to make pastry using all of it. Work out the total mass of pastry the baker can make.
- 10.Work out the difference between 45% of 70 and 35% of 80.
- 11.Write 350 ml : 1.4 l as a ratio in its simplest form.
- 12.Which of these ratios is equivalent to 6 : 10 : 14?
- 13.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.
- 14.Work out the highest common factor of 15 and 25.
- 15.Work out 4368 ÷ 12.
- 16.Jamal invests £600 in a savings account paying 3% simple interest per year. Work out the total amount in the account after 4 years.
- 17.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.
- 18.Priya adds 3.6 and 0.45 on paper and writes down 3.65 as her answer. Work out the correct value of 3.6 + 0.45.
- 19.Write 0.325 as a fraction in its simplest form.
- 20.Write the ratio 4x : 6x in its simplest form, where x is a positive number.
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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