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.The ratio of Josh's savings to Mia's savings is 4:7. Mia has £39 more than Josh. Work out Josh's savings.
- 2.Write the ratio 5 : 8 in the form 1 : n.
- 3.After a price increase of 10%, a laptop costs £330. Work out the original price.
- 4.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.
- 5.A car is bought for £17,500. Its value decreases by 12% in the first year, and by a further 10% of its reduced value in the second year. Work out the value of the car at the end of the second year, giving your answer to the nearest pound.
- 6.The price of a games console is reduced by 10%. In a later sale the reduced price is reduced by 10% again. Work out the overall percentage decrease.
- 7.A recipe uses 0.625 kg of flour. Write this mass as a fraction of a kilogram, in its simplest form.
- 8.A number is multiplied by 4, then 8 is added, giving the result 40. Work out the number.
- 9.Work out 3.7 × 24.
- 10.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.
- 11.2/3 of an amount of money is £30. Work out the amount.
- 12.Work out an estimate for 312 × 19, by rounding each number to 1 significant figure.
- 13.Write 75p : £1.50 as a ratio of whole numbers in its simplest form.
- 14.Work out the highest common factor of 20 and 32.
- 15.Which of these ratios is equivalent to 5 : 4?
- 16.A bag contains red counters and blue counters in the ratio 5:3. There are 56 counters in the bag altogether. Work out how many counters are blue.
- 17.Simplify the ratio 45 : 30 : 75 to its simplest form.
- 18.2.4 kg of cheese costs £36. Work out the cost of 1.5 kg of the same cheese.
- 19.Amelia has 49 boxes of apples with 21 apples in each box. Work out an estimate for the total number of apples, by rounding each number to 1 significant figure.
- 20.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.
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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