GCSE Maths past papers, marked against the real criteria
Nine papers from AQA, Edexcel and OCR, 2023 and 2024, with the mark scheme sitting beside every question. You type your working; it is marked the way an examiner marks it, step by step, including the method marks that go missing when the final answer is right.
Open the papers, free, no card
What "marked against the criteria" actually means
This is the part that decides GCSE Maths grades, and it is worth seeing once rather than being told about. Take a three-mark geometry question in the style of AQA 2023 Paper 1.
Question. ABC, BD and BE are straight lines, with E and D above the line ABC, so the angles ABE, EBD and DBC sit side by side along the straight line. Angle EBD is five times angle ABE, and angle DBC is three times angle ABE. Work out the size of angle EBD in degrees. (3 marks)
A very common answer:
Two marks out of three. The method was right, the arithmetic was right, and a mark went anyway, because solving for x feels like finishing and it is not. That one habit, answering the letter instead of the question, costs more marks across a maths paper than anything else.
A worked-solution site would show you 100° and you would think you had it. What matters is being told which of the three marks you did not get, and why.
Foundation and Higher, and the three boards
Grades 1 to 5 are examined on the Foundation tier and grades 4 to 9 on Higher, with 4 and 5 available on both, so a pupil entered for Foundation cannot be awarded above a 5 whatever they write. Each board sets three papers, one of them non-calculator. AQA and Edexcel papers carry 80 marks each, 240 in all; OCR’s carry 100 each, 300 in all.
The content is nearly the same across AQA, Edexcel and OCR, because all three follow the same subject content published by the Department for Education. What differs is the phrasing, the layout of the answer space, and how much working the mark scheme expects to see, which is exactly why practising on your own board's papers is worth more than practising on more papers.
Where the marks actually go
Method marks (M) are for a correct step and they survive a wrong final answer. Accuracy marks (A) are for the answer itself and usually depend on the method mark before them. B marks stand alone. The practical consequence is the one nobody believes until they see their own paper: showing the working is not politeness, it is where most of the marks are, and a bare correct answer to a multi-mark question often scores less than messy correct working.
The papers
| Board | Year | Paper | Tier | Questions |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| AQA | 2023 | Mathematics Paper 1 | Higher, Non-Calculator | 6 |
| AQA | 2023 | Mathematics Paper 2 | Higher, Calculator | 7 |
| AQA | 2024 | Mathematics Paper 1 | Higher, Non-Calculator | 5 |
| AQA | 2024 | Mathematics Paper 2 | Higher, Calculator | 4 |
| AQA | 2025 | Mathematics Paper 1 | Higher, Non-Calculator | 12 |
| AQA | 2025 | Mathematics Paper 2 | Higher, Calculator | 17 |
| AQA | 2025 | Mathematics Paper 3 | Higher, Calculator | 17 |
| Edexcel | 2023 | Paper 1 | Higher, Non-Calculator | 12 |
| Edexcel | 2024 | Mathematics Paper 1 | Higher, Non-Calculator | 5 |
| Edexcel | 2024 | Mathematics Paper 2 | Higher, Calculator | 5 |
| OCR | 2023 | Mathematics Paper 1 | Higher, Non-Calculator | 6 |
| OCR | 2024 | Mathematics Paper 1 | Higher, Non-Calculator | 6 |
102 questions across 12 papers, each with its own criteria. Everything here is written in the boards' own format and judged against their published criteria; the papers themselves belong to the boards and are not reproduced here.
Try it on your own answer
Open a paper, write what you would have written in the exam, including the wrong bits, and read what comes back. It is free to start and does not ask for a card.
The other subjects
Twenty-three in one place, aligned to AQA, Edexcel and OCR.