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.A quiz has 50 questions. Freya answers 10% of them incorrectly. Work out how many questions she answers incorrectly.
- 2.Freya uses her calculator to work out 7² and writes down 14. Work out the correct value of 7².
- 3.Work out (−3) × 4 + 10
- 4.A jumper is reduced by 15% in a sale to a price of £42.50. Work out the original price.
- 5.A jar contains 24 green sweets and 16 orange sweets. Write the ratio of green sweets to orange sweets in its simplest form.
- 6.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.
- 7.A class has 28 pupils. 16 of the pupils are girls and the rest are boys. Write the ratio of girls to boys in its simplest form.
- 8.Work out 18 − 4 × 2
- 9.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.
- 10.Which of these ratios is equivalent to 6 : 10 : 14?
- 11.Which of these ratios is equivalent to 5 : 4?
- 12.Divide 84 in the ratio 3:4. Work out the smaller share.
- 13.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.
- 14.Oliver drives 95 km at an average speed of 50 km/h. Work out an estimate for the time the journey takes, by rounding the distance to the nearest 100 km.
- 15.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.
- 16.2/3 of an amount of money is £30. Work out the amount.
- 17.A cinema has 250 seats. 12% of the seats are reserved. Work out how many of the seats are reserved.
- 18.Freya types 4² + 3² into her calculator and writes down 49. Work out the correct value of 4² + 3².
- 19.Work out √144 − 2 × 3 + √25
- 20.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.
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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