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 laptop costs £720. A carrying case for it costs 1/9 of the price of the laptop. Work out the cost of the carrying case.
- 2.Work out 3 + 4 × (−2).
- 3.A jumper is reduced by 15% in a sale to a price of £42.50. Work out the original price.
- 4.A café buys 18 boxes of teabags at £3.45 each, and sells all the teabags for £108 in total. Work out the café's profit.
- 5.At midday the temperature in the Lake District was 3 °C. By midnight it had fallen to −6 °C. Work out the fall in temperature.
- 6.Work out the highest common factor of 20 and 32.
- 7.Work out how many factors 36 has.
- 8.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.
- 9.A rectangular garden has its length and width in the ratio 5:3. Given that the perimeter of the garden is 64 m, work out the width of the garden.
- 10.Write the ratio 18:22 in its simplest form.
- 11.Work out 2/5 of 45.
- 12.Freya uses her calculator to work out 7² and writes down 14. Work out the correct value of 7².
- 13.A mortar mix is made from sand and cement in the ratio 5 : 3. Write the ratio of sand to the total mix in its simplest form.
- 14.A concert hall has 300 seats. 20% of the seats are in the balcony. Work out how many of the seats are in the balcony.
- 15.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.
- 16.Work out an estimate for 8,900 ÷ 29, by rounding each number to 1 significant figure.
- 17.A textbook is reduced from £60 to £45. Work out the percentage reduction.
- 18.A shop buys boxes of pens for £4 each. It sells each box on to a school for £3 more than it paid, and charges an extra £2 delivery fee for the whole order. A school orders 5 boxes. Work out the total cost of the order.
- 19.Write the mixed number 2 1/4 as an improper fraction.
- 20.Write down a prime number between 30 and 40.
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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