Edexcel Maths Advance Information November 2022: Summary, Guidance & Downloadable Practice Papers

Now that we’re through the summer GCSEs and the dust has settled on results day stories, some of your students will be in the position of needing to resit maths GCSE this year.

We asked our expert contributor, Christine Norledge, to reflect on the Edexcel maths advance information provided for the November 2022 exams. Christine breaks down the information and considers which topic areas are most likely to pop up this November. She also provides guidance and general advice on how best to prepare your students for their upcoming maths resit.

Who needs to resit maths?

Post-16 students who fulfil all of the criteria below must study GCSE mathematics (and/or English Language) as part of their programme in each academic year:

• Aged 16-18 (or 19-25 with an EHC plan);
• No GCSE grade 4+ pass (or equivalent);
• Studying a programme of 150 hours or more.

For many students, this means continuing to study GCSE maths alongside A Levels, other qualifications or chosen programme of study until they pass the qualification. November is the first opportunity for new Year 12 students to resit their maths GCSE, and, for many students on the borderline between grade 3 and grade 4, it is the best opportunity to gain a pass while content is fresh in their minds.

When are the maths GCSE resits this year?

The exam dates for maths resit exams are:

• Paper 1 – Tuesday 1st November 
• Paper 2 – Thursday 3rd November
• Paper 3 – Monday 7th November

How are maths resits different this year?

The Department for Education has confirmed that the exam adaptations from the June 2022 exam series will be carried forward in November this year. This means that resit students have access to:

• Advance information of topics from the specification to be examined;
• A formula sheet provided in the exams.

From June to November: maths GCSE advance information

The advance information for this autumn’s resit maths and English GCSEs was published a while ago, but I’ve been busy with my summer GCSE mop-up! If you’re teaching a resit group this year, you might be interested to read my blog about GCSE results 2022 and how the advance information married up to the June exams in this series below.

• GCSE Maths Paper 1 2022
• GCSE Maths Paper 2 2022
• GCSE Maths Paper 3 2022
• Summary Of ALL GCSE Maths Papers 2022

Following on from this, I thought I’d blog again about the advance info for the November maths GCSE resits, with a few thoughts from me about how the papers might look, and some suggested topics and exam questions to practise with your resit groups. This blog focuses on Edexcel GCSE maths exams only. Other exam boards (AQA, OCR, etc.) will vary greatly, so check their advance information.

November papers again likely to match advance information

As the Edexcel summer exam papers matched up so well with the maths advance information, it’s pretty safe to assume that the same will be the case for November 2022 – it feels like a massive disadvantage to re-sitters if this isn’t the case. A quick caveat from me though is that this blog is in no way endorsed by Edexcel and is my opinion only.

The information included in the graphics below has been taken from the information available on Edexcel’s website. While I have carefully checked them, remember it’s always recommended that you refer to the original source material as well.

Read below for information on both the Edexcel Foundation and Higher tiers.

See also: GCSE maths predicted papers 2022

Edexcel maths advance information: Foundation

• Bolded content is on the advance information lists for Foundation and Higher. Note: this doesn’t necessarily mean that all bold content is crossover. For example, in June exact trig. values appeared on both lists, but it was assessed differently on Foundation and Higher Paper 1.
• Content which is ticked appeared in the advance information and on the papers in June 2022.

The vast majority of the content in the November 2022 resit advance information is content from the June papers – which makes sense, as it wouldn’t be realistic to expect students to learn a huge amount of new material in a couple of months.

Many topics have moved from calculator to non-calculator papers or vice versa. For example, standard form is on Paper 3 in November but was in the Paper 1 crossover content in June. So standard form will probably be in crossover again, but it might look slightly different (see Nov 19 3F Q28 for an example).

What’s new on Foundation for November 2022?

Thankfully, the list of topics that weren’t assessed in June 2022 is quite small!

However, we need to bear in mind that the advance information for the June 2022 exams was released nearly eight months ago, at which point teaching would have predictably narrowed to the content on the exams. Students may have not covered some of these topics since before February 2022.

Foundation topics to focus on for November 2022

When considering what to cover with a resit group in the short amount of time before the November exams, think about the profile of your group and which topics will get the most guaranteed marks. There will need to be some careful cherry-picking within these topics.

Unless students have significant amounts of prior knowledge, I’d omit the more challenging topics that weren’t assessed in June 2022, in favour of spending more time on more easily obtainable marks:

• Factorising quadratic
• Area of sector
• Trigonometry
• Volume conversions
• Vectors 

Some of these topics might be worth considering, depending on your students’ prior knowledge:

• Scatter graphs
• Pie charts
• Reciprocals
• Inverse proportion
• Pressure

A quick diagnostic assessment of these topics might tell you whether they’re worth spending time on – I wouldn’t teach any from scratch in the run-up to November.

Further guidance for Foundation in November 2022

In addition to the recommendations above, here are a few more thoughts from the advance information list for Foundation:

• We had reflections and translations in June 2022, so make sure students have revised rotations and enlargements. Transformations is potentially in the crossover content for P1, but the question on P3 is likely to be much more straightforward.
• The conversion graph and direct proportion statements on Paper 2 could refer to the same question, as we didn’t see anything like this on the June 2022 papers. The statement ‘straight line graph’ might also refer to this question.
• Terms of a sequence appears on Paper 3 – this might be a non-pictorial question as June involved drawing.
• June 2022 asked about repeated percentage change but only over 3 years. Here, ‘compound interest’ is explicitly mentioned, possibly implying a greater number of years, steering towards the use of a multiplier/formula method.
• ‘Infer properties of population’ (probable crossover content) has only appeared once before (Jun-19 2H Q3 / 2F Q22) – if we get a similar question in November, this would also include the point on ‘one amount as a fraction of another’, also appearing on both tier lists.

Edexcel maths advance information: Higher

As with the Foundation tables, content in bold appears on the advance information for Foundation and Higher, and ticked content appeared in the advance information and on the papers in June 2022. The same notes apply as above.

• It is not necessarily true that all bold content is crossover, although some of it certainly will be. For example, in June exact trig. values appeared on both lists, but it was assessed differently on Foundation and Higher Paper 1.
• The vast majority of the content in the November 2022 resit advance information is content from the June papers – although this proportion does seem slightly less at Higher level.

Continuing the pattern from Foundation, topics have been swapped between non-calculator and calculator papers. Let’s look at a couple of examples: the switch from Paper 1 to Paper 3 for the standard form (likely crossover) applies again on Higher, and the area of a sector has moved from Paper 1 to Paper 2, meaning it’s less likely to be calculating with exact values.

What’s new on Higher for November 2022?

Higher topics to focus on for November 2022

While this list of content is slightly longer than the equivalent list for Foundation, at least some of the skills on here should be fairly straightforward for a true Higher resit candidate – i.e. those looking to gain grades 6+ which are only accessible on the Higher paper. So focus on:

• Multiplying decimals
• Multiples and HCF
• Money (likely to be in crossover)
• Percentage profit and compound interest
• Linear simultaneous equations*
• nth term of a linear sequence (again, likely crossover)
• Volume & SA of cone and sphere
• Volume of cylinder
• Frequency trees & tree diagrams

*One linear quadratic was assessed in June 2022 so this is a step down in difficulty.

However, considering the need to cover this content (plus revise all the additional topics already on the advance information from June) in the short time before November resits, tiering choices for grade 4s wanting to improve to a 5 should be made on a case-by-case basis.

Further guidance for Higher in November 2022

Alongside the list mentioned above and general revision of the topics covered in June 2022, here are a few more thoughts for planning revision for your Higher students:

• There’s a quadratic equation on Paper 1, but completing the square also turns up on Paper 2 – so the quadratic on Paper 1 could combine with the statements about factorising and difference of two squares.
• The statement about the difference of two squares could also refer to algebraic fractions, as these are frequently assessed together.
• On Paper 2, quadratic equation, graph and gradient of a curve could refer to a question asking students to plot the graph of a quadratic equation, and then use that graph to find the gradient at a given point.
• The sine rule calculation on Paper 1 is likely to be the use of exact trig. values mentioned.
• Volume and SA of a cone and sphere are unlikely to be a composite solid, as this was explicitly mentioned as such in June 2022. 
• ‘Infer properties of population’ (probable crossover content) has only appeared once before (Jun-19 2H Q3 / 2F Q22) – if we get a similar question in November, this would also include the point on ‘one amount as a fraction of another’, also appearing on both tier lists.