Prior to the 2023 exam series, I did a bit of work for Complete Mathematics analysing past papers for the most frequently occurring topics on each of the three main exam boards – AQA, EdExcel and OCR.
It turns out that the most frequently occurring topics across the three are…
Foundation: Direct and Inverse Proportion Problems in Context, Money Problems in Context, Powers and Indices (Squares, Cubes and Roots), Ratio (Simplifying), Factors, Multiples & Primes, Fractions of Amounts, Ratio (Sharing), Form and Solve Equations, Percentages of Amounts, Substitution, Solving Equations in One Unknown, Transformations, Equivalences Between Fractions, Decimals & Percentages, Collecting Like Terms, Converting Metric Units.
 | Taking these topics into account, I’ve created a spreadsheet that will create a 30-mark test which randomises by pressing ‘F9’. The sheet will produce a nice A4 booklet from one piece of paper with the answers on the back. You can download this here (I recommend that you download the file and open in Microsoft Excel instead of working in Google Sheets). |
GCSE Higher Revision Booklets
These resources were written against the Higher OCR GCSE Mathematics specification (J560) with the intention of giving pupils one (or a small few) question(s) to identify any gaps in understanding.
Download: Algebra (Solutions). Geometry (Solutions). Number (Solutions). Probability (Solutions). Ratio and Proportion (Solutions). Statistics (Solutions). Trigonometry (Solutions).
I also wrote similar documents for AQA, referred to as the ‘topic audit resource‘ which can be found here.
Infinite Calculation Mat
Whilst this wasn’t designed with a GCSE class in mind, I imagine that this would be very useful with lower attaining students who don’t have the confidence with basic arithmetic that you would expect them to.
Download the Excel file, and press F9 until you’re happy with the numbers. Too many duplicates for me on this one, so it might take a while to get what you want – or maybe not!
Homework Booklet
In the past (dated August 2017) I worked on an Excel spreadsheet that automates adding questions and objectives to a file at the same time. The spreadsheet, when you enter a code in a cell, fills in a question and another box with an objective for that question.
The questions from the UKMT Mathematics Trust (questions with ‘I’ and ‘IO’ as their question number are from the Intermediate Challenge and Olympiad, ‘J’ and ‘JO’ from the Junior Challenge and Olympiad), the Irish Mathematics Teachers’ Assocation (‘IR’ for the regional and ‘IF’ for the final) and the Primary Maths Challenge (those with ‘P’ as a question number) have been invaluable, and I’ve also added the example questions from the specification for the 2017 GCSE.
You can download the spreadsheet by clicking the image above, or by clicking this link.