AQA GCSE Maths Exam Board Updates 2022

Posted on 15th February 2022

Posted by CENTURY

Estimated reading time: 12 minutes

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This blog post is based on our professional opinion after interpreting all the available information and is not endorsed by AQA.

To mitigate the difficulties that students have faced over the last 2 years with months of lost learning due to Coronavirus lockdown restrictions, the exam boards are publishing what will be in this year’s maths GCSE papers. The exam boards have not explicitly stated what will be left out of the exams. This is valuable information for teachers in order to help them to plan lessons in the remaining time left until the exams.

We have picked through the AQA specification and their published Summer 2022 support and identified those topics that do not appear to be tested in 2022. This is based on our professional opinion after interpreting all the available information. Certain fundamental topics are assumed to be assessed even though not explicitly mentioned, e.g. basic number skills, units and rounding.

Here’s a summary for AQA broken down by tier and topic. We have also included a document of crossover topics which feature in both the Foundation and Higher tier Summer release materials. These can be a useful indication of questions that may appear in the same paper. They are likely to appear at the back of the Foundation paper and the front of the Higher paper. These questions are likely to be the most difficult in the Foundation paper and the easiest in the Higher paper. These will be useful topics for revision for students who are on the 4/5 grade borderline.

AQA Summer 2022 support pages

Our mapping of the support document against the AQA specification

Crossover topics

AQA Foundation Tier

Number

What’s not in the exam:

  • Ordering fractions
  • Reciprocals
  • Reverse fractions
  • Lowest common multiple
  • Square and cube roots
  • Calculations with bounds

Algebra

What’s not in the exam:

  • Solving simultaneous equations (algebraically)
  • Solving quadratic equations (algebraically)
  • Solving inequalities

Ratio, proportion and rates of change

What’s not in the exam:

  • Pressure
  • Direct and inverse proportion equations
  • Reverse percentages

Geometry

What’s not in the exam:

  • Nets
  • Plans and elevations
  • Bearings
  • Enlargement
  • Rotating around a point
  • Geometric vectors
  • Similarity
  • Exact trigonometric values
  • Interior/exterior angles in polygons (except triangles)
  • Congruence
  • Arc length

Probability

“Probability problems” is quoted as a specific topic in the guidance so ruling out any topics is difficult.

Statistics

What’s not in the exam:

  • Sampling
  • Pictograms
  • Stem and leaf
  • Time series graphs
  • Frequency polygons
  • Drawing scatter graphs

AQA Higher Tier

Number

What’s not in the exam:

  • Reverse fractions
  • Rounding to estimate
  • Rationalising the denominator

Algebra

What’s not in the exam:

  • Iteration
  • Calculating with algebraic fractions 
  • Algebraic proof
  • Transformations of graphs
  • Solving inequalities

Ratio, proportion and rates of change

What’s not in the exam:

  • Density (D = M / V)
  • Reverse percentages
  • Direct and inverse proportion equations

Geometry

What’s not in the exam:

  • Angles in parallel lines
  • Interior/exterior angles in polygons
  • Arc length
  • Transformations

Probability

What’s not in the exam:

  • Frequency trees

Statistics

What’s not in the exam:

  • Comparing data
  • Bar chart (all types)
  • Vertical line graphs
  • Time series
  • Frequency polygons

Read our other blog posts on GCSE maths, science and English exam updates here.

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