GCSE Maths Foundation Tier Online Mastery Course

Why ARE the gcse exams so important?

GCSEs are possibly the most important qualifications you’ll earn in your life. So, when you finally make it into the working world, they’ll impact your job prospects, and they are instrumental in the process of accessing higher education such as A-Levels or college courses. In fact, they can even impact your ability to apply for a degree, although this is less common, and A-Level results are generally a bigger factor when applying for university courses.

GCSE results have an indirect effect on further education, because they can have an impact on what A-Levels you can take, and where you can take them. It’s for this reason that everyone should take their GCSEs seriously; they set you up for the next qualifications, which will shape the direction of your career.

Aside from this, GCSEs are a great environment to learn about new ideas, letting you figure out which subjects you’d be interested in pursuing further (if any!). Many students choose their A-Level subjects based on enjoyment or performance at GCSE, and some even stick with a subject for degree level or beyond. Therefore, it’s worth paying attention in your GCSE lessons, since they may contain interesting material which you will want to pursue in the future.

GCSEs are a great environment for learning new revision and studying techniques. So, they can also act as a ‘trial-by-fire’ for work ethic, encouraging young people to work harder in order to achieve their goals.

WHAT IS GCSE Maths FOUNDATION-TIER?

As of 2017, GCSE Maths involves taking 3 exams. They are all worth 33% of your total GCSE Maths grade, and are all sat at the end of your GCSE course, which will be in June of year 11. So, each of these exams is 1 hour and 30 minutes long, and the total mark for each paper is 80. So, this means that you have just over 1 minute for each mark (1.125 minutes, or 1 minute, 7 seconds to be exact). You can use this general rule to figure out how much time you should spend on each question.

So, for an 8-mark question, you should give yourself about 8 minutes, 55 seconds to complete it. This means you can keep yourself on schedule to complete the paper. Feel free to answer the easiest questions first. Usually, the less demanding questions appear at the start of the paper, but it might be the case that you find some techniques or types of question easier than others.

Read through the whole paper at least once before you start, and then begin by answering the question you find easiest. So, work your way up from there. Alternatively, you might want to go for some of the more demanding questions while your memory is fresh. This works for some students, but only attempt this tactic if you’re confident that it’ll benefit you. There’s no shame in starting with the simpler questions and securing yourself some easy marks.

THe Format of the gcse maths FOUNDATION-TIER

The first paper is a non-calculator paper, so this section will focus on questions which you can solve without using a calculator, or questions for which a calculator isn’t relevant. The second and third papers are calculator exams, so you are allowed to use a calculator (and will probably need it for at least some questions). The difficulty of questions in these papers increases as you progress through it. Generally, the simplest questions will be at the start of the paper, whilst the most demanding will appear at the end. Some questions will be worth one mark, and others will require multiple steps to find the answer. The longer questions will be worth more marks, however.

The topics covered in our GCSE Maths book include:

• Numbers;
• Algebra;
• Ratio, proportion and rates of change;
• Geometry and measures;
• Probability;
• Statistics.