Review of Maths GCSEs 2025: Teacher Survey Results

It’s official, the 2025 maths GCSEs are complete! A huge well done to you and your students for all of the hard work you put in. While you wait for the results, we’re bringing you something a little different this year.  

Usually, we’d bring you a round-up of all three Edexcel papers. But this year, for the first time, we’ve asked those of you involved in seeing your Year 11 cohort through their maths GCSEs for your opinions on the papers. 

Whether your students sat the Edexcel, AQA, OCR, or WJEC exam board, or any others, we wanted to hear your opinions on the 2025 maths GCSE experience. 

A huge thank-you to everyone who completed our 2025 maths GCSE survey or joined the conversation online. If you still have insights to add, we’d love to hear them. Use #GCSEs2025 or tag @thirdspacetweet. 

This blog focuses on the overall difficulty and experience of the papers, including your students’ preparation, rather than question-level detail. After results day on the 21st August, we’ll return with a full 2025 maths GCSE breakdown and results analysis.

GCSE MATHS 2025: STAY UP TO DATE

Join our email list to stay up to date with the latest news, revision lists and resources for GCSE maths 2025. We’re analysing each paper during the course of the 2025 GCSEs in order to identify the key topic areas to focus on for your revision.

GCSE dates 2025
GCSE results 2025 (when published)
Analysis of GCSE Maths Paper 1 2025
Analysis of GCSE Maths Paper 2 2025
GCSE Maths Teacher Survey Results 2025

For those looking to get ahead next year, we’ve created a GCSE starter kit to help your next year 11 cohort build automaticity, memorise key mathematical formulas and ease exam anxiety. You can download it for free below.

Which 2025 GCSE maths exam boards did we ask teachers about in our survey?

We wanted to hear about everyone’s experience, no matter which exam board your students sat. 

Here’s a breakdown of the exam boards our survey respondents used.  

Influences on the 2025 GCSE experience 

No two GCSE exam series are the same.  Every year, various factors and events impact GCSEs. In 2025, three notable influences impacted the maths GCSE experience. 

1. Lasting impacts of Covid-19 
2. Rising budget pressures 
3. Increasing use of AI in education 

We’ll take a look at these in more depth later, but first, how did your experience compare to 2024? 

2025 GCSE maths papers vs. 2024: pretty pleasant  

For those of you who are GCSE veterans, we asked how your 2025 experience compared, on the whole, with 2024. 

And it would seem that for three of the largest exam boards, there wasn’t much variation!

Maths GCSE papers 2025: a deeper dive 

Now that we’ve seen the overall consensus for the 2025 GCSE maths papers compared to 2024, let’s take a more in-depth look at the 2025 Paper 1, Paper 2 and, where applicable for certain exam boards, Paper 3. 

Paper 1

Responses to Paper 1 varied, and not just by exam board, but even within the same exam boards. 

Some found the way their students responded to the exam encouraging.

While others thought the unusually low number of questions left students feeling unsure and even second-guessing throughout the paper. 

Consensus of the respondents for AQA Paper 1 was that both tiers were difficult all around. 

Paper 2: Calculator

AQA’s difficulty appeared to continue into Paper 2 with wordy questions and difficult calculations. 

And for Edexcel, respondents thought it offered some healthy challenges for students, so long as they answered carefully. 

Paper 3: Calculator

While schools were able to predict the topics that appeared on Paper 3 using the previous two papers and the Third Space Learning Edexcel Paper 1 analysis and Edexcel Paper 2 analysis, some felt there were lots of challenging topics left for the third paper.  

Hard work pays off; you prepared your students well 

Overall preparedness  

One thing is certain: school staff felt they had prepared their students well for the 2025 maths GCSEs with an overall rating of 4.1 out of 5. 

Those of you who used one-to-one maths tutoring from Third Space Learning felt even more confident that you had prepared your students with an astounding confidence level of 4.6 out of 5! 

As well as the schools that offered online one-to-one GCSE revision via Third Space Learning, many respondents went the extra mile to put on booster sessions before and after school, and provide lunchtime support for those who needed it. 

We applaud your commitment to your students. 

Others used high-quality GCSE-specific resources to complement their quality-first teaching and ensure students had everything they needed to succeed in their maths exams. 

Content coverage

Many of you used the curriculum set out by your exam board, with a few using other maths schemes of work such as White Rose and Maths Mastery.  

But, no matter which scheme of work you used, it was successful! An incredible 58% of respondents reported completing the full curriculum content with plenty of time for revision! 

27% managed to just about cover all topics in the curriculum, with very few not quite covering everything. Very impressive!  

Tricky topics 

Although you made your way through the curriculum, some areas weren’t trickier than others for students. In particular, a large proportion of students struggled with Geometry. This was followed by Ratio and Proportion and Algebra in an extremely close second and third place.  

But why were these topics the most difficult for students to understand? 

It all boils down to missing the foundational knowledge…

And, not being able to relate the concepts to real life. 

Maths GCSEs 2025: overcoming the challenges

Budgets and staffing

Over the past few years, schools across the country have experienced drastic budget cuts, with 2025 seeing a new low. 

A large number of respondents said staffing shortages and budget cuts negatively impacted GCSE preparation this year, including a lack of specialist maths teachers.

Some respondents even reported having to merge Higher and Foundation classes to ensure all students received the support they needed. 

And others ensured Year 11 students were the priority, but that came at the detriment to younger year groups and pressure on staff.  

A large number of respondents also reported cutting down or stopping external tutoring and interventions altogether. 

For some, no tutoring was offered, while others replaced external provision with in-house tutoring themselves before and after school. 

Resources were also impacted by budget cuts, with many respondents reporting they could no longer use paid resources. Many created their own resources internally. Some used free, high-quality GCSE maths resources like those from Third Space Learning:

Lasting impact of Covid-19 

Despite being 5 years on from the beginning of the pandemic, it appears the 2025 Year 11 cohort is still hugely impacted. 

Not only did these students miss out on sitting their KS2 SATs, making their GCSEs their first formal set of exams, but they had a rocky transition to secondary school, which was consistently disrupted by the pandemic.  

While many believe that the KS2 SATs are more harmful than good to Year 6 pupils, it would seem that sitting them does build some resilience and instils the importance of external exams for future education.

Despite some students downplaying the importance of their GCSEs, others experienced elevated exam anxiety levels due to the lack of any previous external exam experience.  

Use of AI in GCSE preparation

There’s no denying that AI in education is currently a hot topic, and more and more teachers are using it in some form or another.

But it seems for maths GCSEs specifically, AI has not been particularly widely used. We asked our respondents if they’d use any form of AI to help prepare students for their 2025 maths GCSEs, and only 23% said yes. 

This is very similar to the response from primary teachers when we asked them if they’d used AI to prepare for the 2025 maths SATs. 

Where primary and secondary teachers do seem to differ, however, is their consideration of AI in the future. 

While the majority of primary teachers said yes, less than half of secondary teachers said the same, with many more on the fence:

When it comes to using AI for maths GCSEs, most respondents felt they simply didn’t have the knowledge or the training to use it effectively. Many expressed a desire to learn from other teachers who were already doing so. 

45% of respondents who use AI for GCSE maths said they received training on AI or EdTech to support GCSE preparations – in contrast to the 20% of primary teachers who’d received training on using AI for SATs – but it’s clear there is more to be done here to enable teachers to truly feel confident with AI tools.

Others questioned whether support from AI would be aligned with the GCSE syllabus or exam board specifications, or if AI was ‘good enough’ at maths specifically. 

Here at Third Space Learning, we’ve spent the last 18 months building, testing, iterating and improving our AI maths tutor, Skye, and have seen first-hand just how much goes on behind the scenes to ensure our AI tutor is accurate and can teach maths effectively. 

In short, AI is ‘good enough’ at maths, but it depends on the time you can dedicate to honing your training and prompts. In our earlier prototypes, we had plenty of examples of Skye not quite getting it right. Now, thanks to months of extensive training and prompt updates from our (very human!) team of former teachers and technical experts, we’re able to provide schools with an AI tutor that can master even the most complex maths.

Interested in how Skye teaches maths to real students? You can watch a few session clips or try a free session for yourself.

Where teachers did use AI for GCSE maths preparations, the most common use was creating questions for students, with 80% of AI users saying they had generated GCSE-style questions, and 45% saying they’d generated curriculum-aligned questions. Another popular use was for lesson planning, also used by 45% of AI users.

So that’s how secondary teachers are using AI now, but what about the future?

Almost half of our respondents expect more reliance on AI tools in the future, but almost the same number aren’t sure, and 6% expect reliance to go down.

Which AI tool did teachers use most? No surprises there, schools used ChatGPT to supercharge their maths.

Effective tutoring: closing the maths attainment gap 

2024/25 was the first year that schools had to manage without any additional tutoring funding from the National Tutoring Programme (NTP), but it seems plenty of schools still feel it’s worth investing in. Just over half of our respondents provided some kind of in-school maths tutoring for their Year 11s this year.

For most of these schools, this was delivered by school staff rather than external providers, with small group tutoring more common than one-to-one:

Looking across all these providers and methods of delivery, our respondents gave tutoring an average impact score of 7.3 out of 10. This remained fairly consistent when looking at both small group and one-to-one tutoring.

Just over 10% of respondents had used online one-to-one GCSE maths tutoring from Third Space Learning, giving this an average impact score of 8.1. 

100% of these respondents felt the online one-to-one tutoring from Third Space Learning has been effective at helping prepare their Year 11s for GCSEs.

We asked them why they felt it had been so effective, and the top responses were:

• Improved confidence and engagement
• Addressed gaps in knowledge
• Practice with GCSE-style questions
• Personalised tutoring and differentiated questions

Revision, revision, revision 

For many, the use of paid resources halted under budget constraints. But many of you made use of the free GCSE maths resources from Third Space Learning’s Secondary Resource Library. 

An impressive 95% of these people found our GCSE resources helpful in preparing their students for the 2025 GCSE maths June series.  

The top 5 most helpful resources were: 

1. GCSE Exam Questions
2. GCSE Worksheets 
3. GCSE Past Papers 
4. Revision Mats 
5. Revision Guides 

You can find all of these resources to download for free in the Secondary Resource Library: 

• GCSE maths papers: 40+ GCSE maths papers for Edexcel, AQA and OCR 
• Revision Mats: Complete revision mats to help students revise the key skills in the 6 topic areas. 
• GCSE Worksheets: Topic specific maths worksheets to help students prepare for GCSEs. 
• Exam Questions: Exam style questions suitable for Edexcel, AQA and OCR 
• Revision Guides: Step-by-step guides, detailed examples and practice questions.  
• Diagnostic Questions: Multiple choice questions to assess key maths skills and highlight misconceptions 
• Maths Intervention Packs: Detailed revision lessons on selected topics for GCSE greades 3-7.  
• Fluent in Five: Improve knowledge with 5 questions a day covering key skills 

Student wellbeing 

It’s extremely heartwarming to see the number of respondents considering their students’ wellbeing during the GCSE exam season. An overwhelming proportion of respondents reported putting on extra revision sessions and masterclasses for students lacking in confidence with their maths GCSEs. 

Others provided students with mentors and hosted wellbeing workshops with extra mental health support. 

While some took to more unique strategies, including a yoga club, breathing technique workshops and safe rooms at lunchtime to help students navigate the stressful exam period. 

Looking ahead to maths GCSEs 2026: what you would do differently

Maths GCSEs may have only just finished for another year, but our respondents have offered insightful tips to help other Heads of Maths and maths teachers get ahead for next year. 

While this is likely the last thing you want to do right now, why not bookmark these ideas to return to later? 

Clearly, there’s no one singular approach to preparing individual pupils for maths GCSEs, but here are some respondents’ suggestions for 2026: 

• Regular diagnostic assessment to adapt teaching accordingly 
• Consistent exam exposure earlier for students using past papers and exam-style questions. 

• Use of AI to improve student progress

• Start maths interventions earlier to build knowledge and confidence 

If you’re looking to start maths interventions early to address learning gaps and build confidence through personalised one-to-one lessons, we’re currently signing schools up to begin our AI maths tutoring programmes in September 2025. You can learn more about GCSE maths tutoring here. 

Find out more about how school leaders can continue tutoring after the end of the NTP funding.

Here’s to you, wonderful teachers and students

We are so grateful to all the SLT, teachers and school staff who took the time to complete our first GCSE  survey. 

We can’t mention every response, but we can celebrate you all. 

It’s been a pleasure to be part of your 2025 GCSE journey. Whether you’ve read our blogs, used our free maths resources, or your students have benefited from our online one-to-one maths tutoring, we hope you’ve felt supported.  

Good luck to the thousands of Year 11 students we’ve worked with this year, and we’re looking forward to meeting the next cohort of students. 

Remember to download your free GCSE Starter Kit for plenty of high-quality GCSE maths resources to give you a head start next year.