If you walked out of Edexcel A-Level Maths Paper 1 feeling like you’d been hit by a bus, you are very much not alone. The 3 June paper has been called one of the hardest in years, and more than 15,000 students have signed a petition asking Pearson Edexcel to review it. I’ve been tutoring A-Level maths for years and I’ve never seen a reaction quite like it. So first: take a breath. Paper 1 is done, it doesn’t decide your grade on its own, and Edexcel A-Level Maths Paper 2 on Thursday is your chance to claw it all back. Here’s exactly how I’d approach the next 48 hours.
1. Take a breath — Paper 1 does not decide your grade
This is the bit I most want you to hear, because panic is the thing most likely to cost you marks on Thursday.
Your A-Level grade isn’t worked out paper by paper. It’s the total across all three papers — 300 marks — that gets you your grade. Paper 1 is only a third of that. A strong Paper 2 (and Paper 3 the week after) can absorb a rough Paper 1 almost entirely.
And grade boundaries are not a fixed percentage. They’re set after every script in the country has been marked, based on how everyone actually performed. If a paper is harder than usual nationally, the boundaries come down to match — that’s how the system is designed to work. To give you a sense of how much they move: the A* boundary for Edexcel A-Level Maths has swung by more than 40 marks in four years (it was 217/300 in 2022 and 258/300 in 2025). If Paper 1 really was as brutal across the country as it felt in the room, the 2026 boundaries will reflect that. That is precisely what the petition is asking Edexcel to account for — and in practice, the marking process already does.
You can’t change Paper 1 now. So park it, and put everything into the marks that are still on the table.
2. Don’t let Paper 1 bleed into Paper 2
The biggest risk this week isn’t a topic you haven’t revised — it’s walking into Paper 2 already defeated.
Treat Thursday as a fresh 100 marks with no memory of Wednesday-the-3rd. Be careful with the post-mortems, too: rehashing every question with friends, or doomscrolling the petition threads, tends to crank up the anxiety without adding a single mark. Notice it, then redirect that energy into one more practice question. Confidence on the day is worth real marks.
3. Never give up on a question — chase the method marks
Here’s something a lot of students don’t fully use to their advantage: in Edexcel maths, most of the marks are method marks. You don’t get them only for the right final answer — you get them for the right approach, even if the number at the end is wrong.
So never leave a question blank, and never bin a question just because you can’t see the finish line. Instead:
- Write down the relevant formula or rule, even before you know if it’ll work.
- Substitute in the numbers you’ve got.
- Do the next sensible step, and the next.
A blank scores zero, guaranteed. A genuine attempt — working shown clearly — very often picks up two or three marks you’d otherwise have thrown away. Across a whole paper, that’s the difference between grades.
4. If you can’t do part (a), still do part (b)
This follows straight on, and it’s one of my most repeated bits of advice. The parts of a question are often more independent than they look.
Two things work in your favour. First, follow-through marks: if you get part (a) wrong but then use your answer correctly in part (b), the examiner can still award the (b) marks. Second, “show that” questions hand you the answer to part (a) — so even if you can’t prove it, you can use that given result to attempt the later parts.
The rule: read and attempt every part of every question, even when an earlier part has beaten you. Skipping straight past a whole question because part (a) stumped you is how easy marks get left behind.
5. Remember it’s a problem-solving paper now, not a memory test
If Paper 1 taught us anything, it’s that knowing the content isn’t enough on its own. The current spec is deliberately built to reward multi-step reasoning and problem-solving — questions that dress a familiar topic up in an unfamiliar context, or stitch two topics together.
When a question looks alien, don’t freeze. Ask yourself: what is this actually testing? Underline the information you’re given, jot down the tools that might apply (a formula, an identity, a rule), and work in small steps. Half the battle is translating a strange-looking question into the standard maths hiding underneath it.
6. Manage the clock — bank the marks you can get
Paper 2 is 100 marks in 2 hours, so you’ve got a little over a minute per mark. Time pressure was the other big complaint about Paper 1, so go in with a plan.
If a question stalls you, mark it, move on, and come back. Don’t let one stubborn 8-marker eat the time you needed for three questions you’d have walked. Do a first pass scooping up everything you can do confidently, then return to the hard ones with whatever time is left and chase the method marks (see tips 3 and 4). The mark count in the margin tells you roughly how much working — and how much time — each question deserves.
7. Use your calculator and formula booklet as tools
You’re allowed a calculator in every paper — use it as more than a number-cruncher. If you’ve got a modern graphical or advanced scientific model, you can check your own work: solve equations, evaluate a tricky integral or derivative numerically to confirm your answer, or test for a sign change when you’re hunting a root. A 30-second check can save a careless slip.
Know your formula booklet, too — what’s in it (so you don’t waste time re-deriving it) and, just as importantly, what isn’t (so you’re not caught out expecting a formula you actually need to recall). Spend two minutes tonight reminding yourself which is which.
8. Prioritise what didn’t come up in Paper 1 — but don’t ignore the rest
Both Pure papers can examine any topic from the whole pure syllabus — there’s no official “Paper 1 list” and “Paper 2 list.” But examiners do tend to spread the content across a series, so a sensible bet is to give extra attention to the big topics that students have widely reported didn’t feature much in Paper 1.
From the Paper 1 recaps doing the rounds, the paper leaned on quadratics and the discriminant, proof, 2D vectors, exponentials and logs, basic differentiation, definite integration, and the binomial expansion. The high-value topics that look comparatively light or absent — and are therefore worth prioritising tonight — are:
- Trigonometry — solving equations within a given range, exact values, identities, compound and double-angle formulae, and the R-form. This is the one I’d revise first.
- Parametric equations and coordinate geometry — differentiating parametrically, tangents and normals, converting to Cartesian, and circle problems.
- Advanced differentiation — chain, product and quotient rules, implicit differentiation, and connected rates of change.
- Advanced integration — by parts, by substitution, and integrals involving trig or exponentials.
- Differential equations — separating the variables, integrating both sides, and handling the constant.
- Numerical methods — iteration, the Newton-Raphson method, change-of-sign, and the trapezium rule.
A big honest caveat, though: this is based on student recollection, not the official paper, and examiners make no promises — topics absolutely can reappear from one paper to the next. So treat this as where to put extra polish, not as permission to ignore what came up in Paper 1. If anything, keep vectors, logs and binomial warm too.
9. The night before and the morning of
Revision technique only gets you so far if the basics fall apart.
- Don’t cram brand-new content tonight. Consolidate instead — one timed section, or a run back through the questions you usually slip on.
- Sleep. Memory and problem-solving both fall off a cliff when you’re exhausted; eight hours beats a 2am panic session every time.
- Sort your kit. Calculator (and spare batteries), pens, your clear pencil case, water. Know where the exam is and leave early.
- Walk in calm. By Thursday morning the work is done. Your only job is to show what you can do — clearly, one mark at a time.
When you’re stuck tonight and there’s no one to ask
This is the gap I care about most, and it’s exactly where a lot of revision quietly falls apart. It’s the night before, you hit a trig identity that won’t click or an integration-by-parts question that won’t come out, and there’s no one to ask until it’s too late. One wobble hardens into “I can’t do this,” right before the exam.
That moment — the stuck-at-9pm moment — is the whole reason I built Atlas Learn the way I did. My students don’t have to wait for the next lesson to get unstuck; they can message between sessions and get a proper answer back, and there are group sessions where they realise half the class found the same question horrible. Over an exam season, closing that gap quickly is often what keeps a small wobble from becoming a confidence problem.
A quick word for parents reading this: if your son or daughter has been thrown by Paper 1, the most useful thing right now is calm and perspective — remind them the grade is the total across all three papers, and that Thursday is a fresh chance. And if they’re heading into Paper 3, retaking next year, or you’ve a younger one starting their own exam journey, that between-lessons support is there when you need it.
In short
Paper 1 was hard — genuinely, not just in your head. But it’s one third of a grade that’s decided across three papers and boundaries that move to match the paper’s difficulty. Go into Edexcel A-Level Maths Paper 2 treating it as a clean 100 marks: show your working to grab every method mark, attempt every part of every question, manage the clock, give extra polish to the topics that didn’t come up on Wednesday, and sleep well first. Do that, and Thursday can turn this whole week around.
Frequently asked questions
Is Edexcel A-Level Maths Paper 2 the same as Paper 1? Both Paper 1 and Paper 2 are Pure Mathematics, each 2 hours and 100 marks, and either one can contain questions on any topic from the full pure syllabus. There’s no official split of topics between them, so revise the whole pure specification rather than assuming Paper 2 covers something separate.
Will the grade boundaries be lower in 2026 because Paper 1 was hard? Grade boundaries are set after all papers are marked, based on how students performed nationally — so if a paper is harder than usual across the country, the boundaries come down to reflect that. Nobody can promise a specific number in advance, but the process is designed so that an unusually tough paper doesn’t unfairly punish the students who sat it.
What topics should I prioritise for Edexcel Maths Paper 2? Based on what students reported came up in Paper 1, it’s sensible to give extra attention to trigonometry, parametric equations, advanced differentiation and integration, differential equations and numerical methods — while keeping everything else warm, since topics can reappear and both papers can test the whole syllabus.
I did badly on Paper 1 — can I still get a good grade? Yes. Your grade is based on the combined total across all three papers (300 marks), so strong performances on Paper 2 and Paper 3 can make up a lot of ground. The best thing you can do now is focus entirely on the marks still ahead of you.
Worried about the next paper — or the next exam season?
I’m Yasindu, and I run Atlas Learn — hand-matched 1-to-1 online tutoring with something most tutors don’t offer: genuine support between lessons, so a student never stays stuck for long. Whether it’s Paper 3 this month, a resit next year, or a younger sibling just starting out, book a free trial lesson and we’ll take it from there.
