Two hours. 100 marks. The maths inside your head is only half the battle — the other half is deciding, minute by minute, where to spend it. Here is a time-map that has survived hundreds of my students' exam rooms.
The 3-phase split
Phase 1 (0-70 min): The steady pass. Do every question you can do fluently, in order. Don't skip. Don't spend more than the mark-count in minutes on any one question (a 6-mark question gets 6 minutes, max).
Phase 2 (70-95 min): The stuck-question pass. Return to the questions you flagged. You now have 25 minutes for maybe 3-4 questions. Prioritise the highest-mark ones first.
Phase 3 (95-120 min): The check + finish pass. Any question you truly couldn't crack — write down a first line. Even a re-statement of the question with variable names earns method marks. Then check the whole paper.
Per-minute breakdown
- 0-2 min: Read the front page. Circle the total marks. Note calculator vs no-calculator.
- 2-10 min: Question 1 (usually 5-7 marks, algebra warmup).
- 10-70 min: Steady pass at ~1 minute per mark.
- 70-95 min: Flagged questions. Set a hard 6-minute cap per question.
- 95-115 min: Finish everything you can, even with partial working.
- 115-120 min: Check. Not re-solve — CHECK. Sign errors. Wrong-way-round differentiation. Calculator misreads.
The 90-second decision rule
If you've been on a question for 90 seconds and you don't know your first move, FLAG IT and move on. Come back in Phase 2. This is the single hardest thing to learn, and it's worth more marks than any topic revision.
What to do when a question stumps you
Read it again, slowly. Half the "stumps" are misreads. What is it asking? Circle the command word ("find", "show that", "prove", "hence"). Underline the given.
Write down what you have. Even before you know the plan, write "given: $y = 2x^3 + \ldots$, need: value of $x$ where $\frac{dy}{dx} = 0$". You've just earned a knowledge mark for stating the given, and the act of writing usually unsticks you.
Look for the topic. Every A-Level Maths question comes from one of 8-10 topic buckets. Which bucket is this? Which method for that bucket haven't you tried?
Move on before the 6-minute cap. Come back in Phase 2 with a fresh brain.
The "hence" trap
When a question part says "hence" or "hence, or otherwise", the examiner is telling you: use the result of the PREVIOUS part. If you're stumped, look back one part. The answer to (a) is almost certainly the launchpad for (b).
The "show that" trap
"Show that $x = 3$" means you MUST arrive at $x = 3$ by legitimate working. If you can't get there — but a subsequent part uses $x = 3$ — that subsequent part is still worth full marks. Write "assuming $x = 3$" and continue.
Your rehearsal plan
Two weeks before the real exam, do a full paper under strict time. But afterwards — and this is the point — annotate WHEN you did each question. Which ones went past their mark-count minute? Which ones took 90 seconds to start? Adjust your Phase 1 order for the real paper based on this data.
Do this twice more. By the third rehearsal, your plan is muscle memory — and two hours becomes just enough.
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