If you're sitting AQA, Pearson Edexcel or OCR, your GCSE Maths Paper 2 is on Wednesday 3 June 2026. That's seven days away. WJEC/Eduqas and CCEA differ by a day or two depending on the spec, but the principle is the same: Paper 1 (non-calc) is done, Paper 2 is the calculator paper, and the GCSE Maths Paper 2 topics that come up next week have a lot in common with the ones that came up last summer. You've got one structured week to land them.
The good news: Paper 2 is the most predictable paper in the GCSE. Examiners aren't paid to surprise you. They're paid to sample a fixed list of GCSE Maths Paper 2 topics from your exam board's published specification, and that list barely moves between sittings. If you know which topics are basically guaranteed to appear, you also know which topics deserve the next seven evenings.
What Paper 2 actually is (and what you get inside it)
Paper 2 is 90 minutes, calculator allowed, 80 marks. Foundation runs 1–5 grades, Higher runs 4–9 grades: same paper structure on both tiers, harder questions on Higher. You'll have a scientific calculator (your own, ideally the one you've been using all year, because this is not the day to debut a new model), and you'll have the official formula sheet bound inside the paper.
Ofqual has confirmed the formula sheet stays in GCSE Maths through to 2030–31 at least, so any older video on YouTube telling you to memorise the quadratic formula at all costs is out of date. You don't have to memorise what's printed in front of you. You do have to know how to find it in twenty seconds, not two minutes. More on that below.
The topics that almost always show up
Across the last five years of papers (AQA, Edexcel, OCR) the same question families keep landing. Not in a copy-paste way (the numbers change, the wording changes, the context dresses up as supermarkets or running tracks or recipes) but the underlying skill being tested is stable. Here's the realistic list, in roughly the order they're worth your time on a calculator paper:
Ratio and proportion. Splitting in a ratio. Best-buy comparisons. Recipe scaling. Direct and inverse proportion graphs. There is almost no calculator-paper sitting where ratio doesn't appear twice, often as a wordy multi-step question worth 4–5 marks.
Algebra: solving and rearranging. Linear equations, simultaneous equations, rearranging a formula to make a different letter the subject. On Higher, quadratics (factorising, quadratic formula straight off the sheet, completing the square). Algebra is the spine of the paper, not a topic. It shows up inside other questions even when it isn't the headline skill.
Percentages: including compound and reverse. Compound interest, depreciation, percentage change, reverse percentages ("the sale price is £42 after a 30% discount: find the original price"). The calculator makes these fast if you know the multiplier method. If you're still doing percentages by long-hand division on Paper 2, that's a fixable week-of-the-exam habit.
Geometry and trigonometry. Pythagoras. SOHCAHTOA. Angles in parallel lines and polygons. On Higher, the sine rule and cosine rule (both on the formula sheet), area of a triangle using ½ ab sin C, and sometimes 3D Pythagoras. If you can spot which triangle rule applies in the first ten seconds, you'll get the marks. If you can't, you'll burn three minutes drawing arrows.
Statistics and probability. Tree diagrams, frequency tables, mean from grouped data, scatter graphs and lines of best fit. On Higher, conditional probability and Venn diagrams come up regularly. Probability questions look intimidating and are usually 3–4 marks of reasonably gentle method marks if you slow down and label things.
Sequences. Linear (nth term), quadratic on Higher, and the occasional pattern recognition question. Worth practising because the marks are quick once you can spot the pattern type.
That's six families. Together they typically account for the large majority of the paper. Everything else (bounds, surds, vectors, transformations) also appears, but with less reliable weighting. Get the six above solid first, and the rest is upside.
The formula sheet drill: find it in 20 seconds, not two minutes
The formula sheet sits at the back of your question booklet on the day. The trap is that students who've never opened it during revision spend ages searching when the pressure's on. Tonight, do this:
Print the formula sheet from your exam board's website (search "[your board] GCSE Maths formula sheet"). Stick it next to your desk. For each formula on it, write down (out loud, on paper) one type of question where you'd use it. Cosine rule → finding the missing side of a non-right-angled triangle when you know two sides and the included angle. Volume of a cone → 3D mensuration question. That's it. Fifteen minutes, once, this week. Now the sheet is muscle memory rather than a foreign object on the day.
What this week's evenings should actually look like
Pick three past-paper questions per topic family: not full papers, just individual questions. That's eighteen questions across the six families above, which fits inside one focused evening if you keep moving. Do them with the calculator and formula sheet you'll have on the day, not a different one. Mark them honestly against the mark scheme. Anywhere you lost marks for a working-out line you skipped, write that habit down. That's the bug you're patching.
Then on a separate evening: one full Paper 2 under timed conditions. 90 minutes, 80 marks, no breaks, calculator only. The point isn't the score. It's the pacing. Calculator-paper pacing trips up students who could easily do the maths if given a free run at each question. Practising the timing once before the day saves you from finding out the hard way.
Three things that lose marks even on questions you can do
First: units. "Convert all measurements to the same unit before you start." Examiners love a Paper 2 question where the radius is in centimetres and the answer's wanted in metres. One forgotten conversion turns a 4-mark question into a 0-mark question.
Second: rounding too early. Round only at the final step, and only to whatever the question asks for (usually 3 significant figures). Rounding to 2 dp halfway through a multi-step calculation is a classic source of "method right, answer wrong, lose half the marks".
Third: the working-out line. Even if you've got the calculator answer in your head, write the line showing what you typed. Method marks are worth real marks on the calculator paper. Examiners can't award them for an answer that materialised out of nowhere.
The last week, briefly
Tonight through Sunday: six families, three past-paper questions each, marked. Monday or Tuesday: one full Paper 2 under timed conditions. The night before (the 2nd): the formula sheet drill, two of the questions you got wrong earlier this week redone clean, and sleep. Don't try to learn a new topic in the last 72 hours. Protect what you've already built.
You've done the work. Paper 2 is the predictable one. Use the week.
You'll be fine.