Your GCSE Maths AQA Exam Explained with Deb Friis

Getting ready for your AQA GCSE Maths exam can feel daunting, especially with three papers to prepare for and a wide range of topics to cover. That’s precisely why we’ve teamed up with Deb Friis, our expert author at Oxford Revise, to walk you through what to expect and how to prepare effectively.

From understanding the structure of the Edexcel exam to mastering key techniques and avoiding common pitfalls, Deb shares practical advice to help you revise with confidence. Whether you’re aiming to improve your grades or simply want to feel more prepared, this guide is your essential companion for navigating Papers 1-3 – step by step and with purpose. 

How to prepare for your AQA GCSE Maths exam?

Hello, my name is Deb Friis and I’m a secondary maths teacher with over 20 years experience teaching both GCC and A level maths.

I’m going to talk to you about the AQA GCSE maths exam. It consists of three papers:

• Exam paper one is always the non calculated paper.
• Papers two and three allow a calculator to be used.

Breaking down the AQA GCSE Maths exam questions

Each paper is worth 80 marks in total and on a AQA you can also get multiple choice questions on anywhere in the papers which are worth 1 mark each.

The papers begin easier and get harder as you go through, and any topic could appear anywhere on the paper. It’s really important that you try to get these easy questions right, whatever tier you’re doing.

What to focus on when revising for your AQA GCSE Maths exam?

Knowledge

There are two main things to focus on when revising for your GCSE exam. The first thing is learning your key facts. These are things like definitions of words such as factor, multiple and prime. Fraction, decimal percentage equivalents. And then formula for things like area and volume.

Retrieval

You can learn these by using the retrieval practice questions in your revision guides to test yourself, get your friends and family to help and test you as well. Also put these on flash cards and use these to help you to learn them.

By ensuring you know these facts thoroughly, you free up your working memory – allowing you to focus more effectively on the trickier exam questions.

Practice

And the second tip for your GCSE maths revision is to practice as many of these questions as possible. To begin with, use your revision guide to practice the topic- specific questions. Once you’re confident with the techniques, then move on to the more challenging exam questions, which could include any topic or a mix of several.

Which techniques can help? 

There are some techniques to help you to do these questions. Firstly, try to write down anything that you might know that relates to the question when you start it, this might help you to see what to do.

Secondly, make sure that you annotate on diagrams, and you write notes saying what you’re doing at each step.

Always make sure you write down the calculations; then, go back and check the question to ensure you’ve answered it fully. You’ve added it to the correct number of decimal places, and you fully simplified.

What are my top 5 tips for GCSE Maths Revision?

So, my top five tips for GCSE maths revision are:

1. To begin with, revise little and often as much as possible, but only a little bit at a time.
2. Next, test yourself on key facts and make sure that you know them thoroughly.
3. Then, practise questions, mark them and then get help with anything you don’t understand.
4. After that, do as many questions as possible.
5. Finally, start doing exam papers closer to your exam under exam conditions so that you get used to being an stressful situation – and don’t find it as stressful when you sit the final exam.

Good luck!

If you found Deb Friis’s GCSE Maths revision tips and exam strategies helpful, then watch more from Deb on the Oxford Revise YouTube Channel.

GCSE Maths Revision Guides