Getting to grips with the Syllabus

You might be a bit lost when thinking about revising for your maths A Level. There has been a recent change as of 2017 in how the subject is sat, and now exams are taken at the end of the course rather than at the end of both years. We’ll highlight how this changes things and what this means for studying.

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Then and Now

Previously, A Level maths was split into yearly examinations, or even twice a year in some cases. As mentioned in our first blog post, we’re looking at Pure Mathematics, Statistics and Mechanics. These were covered in both AS and A2, with exams each year and no coursework.

Coursework remains off the table, but now the lines between AS and A2 are blurred — with papers only at the end of A2.

This might sound great for some (less exams, nice!), but also a little daunting for others (I’ve got to remember that surds question from the start of my first year, WHAT?!), with your total score being based solely on the final hours of your time as an A Level maths student.

My Exam Board

We’ve broken down what this looks like across the exam boards to give you a quick intro on how the exams will be split for you. While there is variety in content and structure across the different exam boards, key terminology such as ‘mathematical reasoning’ is shared through all their specification documents and exam structures are balanced. We’ve linked each of their sites in the titles if you want a closer look for yourself.

AQA:

• Paper 1: Pure Mathematics
• Paper 2: Pure Mathematics + Mechanics
• Paper 3: Pure Mathematics +Statistics

Each paper is 2 hours long and worth ⅓ of your total grade.

Edexcel:

• Paper 1: Pure Mathematics 1
• Paper 2: Pure Mathematics 2
• Paper 3: Statistics + Mechanics

Each paper is 2 hours long and worth ⅓ of your total grade.

OCR:

• Paper 1: Pure Mathematics
• Paper 2: Pure Mathematics + Statistics
• Paper 3: Pure Mathematics +Mechanics

Each paper is 2 hours long and worth ⅓ of your total grade.

The Syllabus

The syllabuses across exam boards have a strong focus on problem solving and mathematical reasoning. The purpose of which is to try to push your understanding of maths in the real world and give you transferrable skills that can be taken out of the classroom. Couple this with sitting the exams at the end of your A2s means that the laws of indices and simultaneous equations you soak in during your first year are going to carry weight further down the line. You’ll reuse and build upon everything you learn to make you a well-rounded mathematician by the time you are through.

AITutor Syllabus Explorer

Being able to visualise the syllabus like we’ve done above will help you see the applicability of that factorisation you did in AS to help understand the repeated roots of a quadratic in A2.

So, how do I prepare?

This is where things start to get a bit tricky. As it stands, only one year of exams has been taken for this new Syllabus and exam structure and this has the unfortunate knock-on of limited exam papers available. However there is a huge library of resources online ranging from students asking questions on site like Reddit and Quora, online tutors, video tutorials and exam prep websites. If you spend the time, you’ll be sure find the help you need.

Aside from this, our biggest bit of advice is to get stuck in with practising your algebra. If you reign in on this as the term is starting, you’ll find you’ve built a good foundation for the maths you’ll be using in the day-to-day. Before you know it, you’ll be using laws of indices in complex integration questions and factorising the quadratic to solve the roots of some mechanics problem with your eyes closed.