22 questions on percentage change, reverse percentages, simple and compound interest, and depreciation.
💷 Percentages and compound interest
Percentages appear on all three papers and in more contexts than any other single topic — prices, wages, interest, VAT, population, depreciation. This sheet covers the whole of it in order. It begins with percentage of an amount and percentage change, including finding the percentage rather than applying it; moves to multipliers, which make everything after this easier; then to reverse percentages, where you are given the value after the change and asked for the original, and where subtracting instead of dividing is the commonest error in the topic; then to simple interest, compound interest and depreciation, where the multiplier is raised to a power rather than multiplied by the number of years. The last few questions mix the types without labelling them, because on the paper they are not labelled either.
- 1.A textbook is reduced from £60 to £45. Work out the percentage reduction.
- 2.A restaurant adds a service charge of 15% to a bill of £120. Work out the service charge.
- 3.After a price increase of 10%, a laptop costs £330. Work out the original price.
- 4.Work out 15% of £40, using 10% and 5%.
- 5.A cinema has 250 seats. 12% of the seats are reserved. Work out how many of the seats are reserved.
- 6.A charity shop buys a coat for £24 and sells it for a profit that is 3/8 of the buying price. Work out the selling price.
- 7.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.
- 8.£5000 is invested in an account paying 4% compound interest each year. Work out the total interest earned after 3 years.
- 9.£2000 is invested in a savings account that pays 5% compound interest each year. Work out the value of the investment at the end of 2 years.
- 10.A company's profit this year is 130% of last year's profit. Last year's profit was £40,000. Work out this year's profit.
- 11.Aisha invests £3200 in Account A, which pays 5% compound interest each year. She also invests £3200 in Account B, which pays 3% simple interest each year. Work out how much more Account A is worth than Account B after 2 years.
- 12.The price of a jacket increases by 50% and then decreases by 50%. Describe the overall change from the original price.
- 13.2/3 of an amount of money is £30. Work out the amount.
- 14.A recipe uses 160 g of flour. Sam wants to increase the amount by 1/4. Work out the new amount of flour.
- 15.A box holds 140 pens. 25% of the pens are red. Work out how many of the pens are red.
- 16.A jumper is reduced by 15% in a sale to a price of £42.50. Work out the original price.
- 17.Maya buys a vintage car for £15000. Its value is expected to increase by 4% each year for 2 years. She then plans to sell the car and use £2000 of the money from the sale to buy a trailer. Work out how much money she will have left after selling the car and buying the trailer.
- 18.A pack contains 20 stickers. Noah gives 1/5 of the pack to his sister. Work out how many stickers he gives away.
- 19.There are 2500 electric cars registered in a town. The number is predicted to increase by 6% each year. Work out the predicted number of electric cars after 3 years, to the nearest whole number.
- 20.Work out the difference between 45% of 70 and 35% of 80.
- 21.£3000 is invested in a savings account that pays 4% compound interest each year. Work out the value of the investment after 2 years.
- 22.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.
What is on this worksheet?
The sheet holds 22 questions drawn from the MathsUK bank — the content areas covered: Ratio, proportion and rates of change, Number (statements R9, R16, N12). It is pitched at GCSE Foundation and takes about 40 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 22 questions before checking — about 40 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 22 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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