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With A Level results in the bag and GCSE results here once again, I thought I'd turn back the years and put my old knowledge to the test.
I decided to test just how much GCSE maths I remember by retaking a past paper.
Since I took my GCSEs, the grading system has changed, going from A* - G to 9 - 1, in 2017.
With this, (at least I think anyway), the tests have gotten harder.
The grade changes took place in 2017
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Not to brag or anything, but I did get an A* in my GCSE maths exam, but can this be replicated more than 10 years later with no revision?
Well, here is my attempt at resitting a GCSE maths exam, and finding out just how much I remember from my time at secondary school.
How did I get on resitting a GCSE maths exam 10 years later?
Edexcel was my exam board back in the day; God, doesn't that make me sound old, but this meant that I went with the same one when choosing a past paper.
You can find an array of past papers online, which is useful for current students revising ahead of their own exams.
I decided to go with the higher paper (as that is what I sat) from last year, May 2024.
The paper is an hour and 30 minutes long, so I gave myself that amount of time to see how far I could get... Spoiler: it didn't matter.
Can I resit my GCSEs or A Levels?
And through the lack of having a proper calculator, I opted for a non-calculator exam.
So there we were, spending my Saturday afternoon sitting a GCSE maths exam, is there a better way to use your time?
The timer had started, and I felt as ready as I ever would be.
Turning to question one, it reads as follows:
Here are the first four terms of an arithmetic sequence. 1 5 9 13
Find an expression, in terms of n, for the nth term of this sequence.
Easy enough, work out the difference between each number, which in this case is 4, and then figure out the difference between that number and the first in the sequence, which is -3.
Question 1 and my workings out
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4n - 3 is the answer, and we're feeling good.
Now I won't go through every question, but you can view the full paper here.
Questions that followed included topics such as fractions, area, line graphs, ratio, simultaneous equations and algebra.
Up until question 14, I felt good, and was confident I'd done ok, and then it all went downhill.
From working out the sector of a circle in pi and rationalising denominators, to volume and more complex algebraic equations, I was struggling.
An algebra question I could not answer
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And I'm not afraid to admit it, from question 14 to 23, which was the final one, you could count the marks I achieved on one hand...
What grade did I get on my GCSE maths exam retake?
So, after totalling up all my marks, you may be shocked to find out that I would've actually gotten an A grade.
I got 49/80 overall, which is a 7 in the current grading system.
There were three higher papers in 2024, one non-calculator and two calculator, of which I took the first one.
I divided each mark by three to get an average for each paper.
The grade boundaries for the 2024 Edexcel higher papers are as follows:
- Max mark - 240
- 9 - 197 (66 marks per paper)
- 8 - 167 (56 marks per paper)
- 7 - 137 (46 marks per paper)
- 6 - 105 (35 marks per paper)
- 5 - 73 (24 marks per paper)
- 4 - 42 (14 marks per paper)
- 3 - 26 (9 marks per paper)
Overall, I was delighted with how I got on, and I reckon, dare I say it, an A* was not a fluke and could be replicated with a bit of revision.
I managed to remember a fair amount and have educated guesses on others, which in the end helped me still come out with a great result.
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But that was not the only thing I came away with from this experience, with the last third of the paper giving me nothing but a headache.
So it is something I don't plan on repeating anytime soon...
For all of you getting your GCSE results this week, good luck!
How do you think you would fare if you re-sat your GCSEs? Let us know in the comments.