Grade 9 Maths Paper GCSE (and other difficult GCSE questions) - 2018 thread

Isn’t Edexcel harder? Or does it just seem harder since we’ve been taught differently. Because AQA GCSE is fairly easy then our teacher handed us an Edexcel paper and it was far more complicated. There were 7 mark questions too!

I did AQA GCSE Maths but I'm doing A levels in Edexcel.

I think in GCSE, AQA Maths is actually harder (hence the lower boundaries). I think due to pupils' lessons, their problem solving skills are better in AQA but there are far more wordy questions and weird questions which can trip up grade 9 mathematicians sometimes (on AQA) however they seem to be less "pure" in the maths required. On the other hand, Edexcel seems to have harder "pure Maths" questions as evident by 2017 GCSE Paper 1 (the cosine rule question) but the questions are a lot more straightforward e.g. calculate this, show this, prove that, solve for, etc. without any context or wording to the question (that AQA has) making it seem Edexcel seem harder but AQA actually is, generally speaking.

For A level, I have no idea since I don't have experience with AQA.

This is very helpful. And yes I do agree with the wordy questions and confusing students with what to do. It’s a case of they already know the content and they know how to work the question out but they are unsure what it is actually asking them to do.

Yeah - it's even worse for OCR MEI A level as the wording is quite disgusting if I may say so xD

I'm about to do it, hopefully it's hard!

You're in year 11 and you created this? That is crazy man! The questions look so difficult and professional, hats off to you my man

I have been working on my paper for a while now and I am proud to announce that it is finally ready to submit.

This paper was designed for GCSE students who are aiming for a grade 9 in their GCSE's Maths exam. The questions I have created are meant to be difficult so please do not be put off by them if you cannot answer them. (Me and other members will always be happy to help in chat)

This isn't only for GCSE students. Anyone is welcome to have a try, and you can discuss your answers/workings with others in the chat. HOWEVER I must insist that if you are going to submit an answer to this thread, please use a SPOILER so that it does not ruin the question for others who are trying to work it out.

I hope you find this paper useful and feel free to distribute it as much as you would like to

I would like to give a huge thank you to @Notnek and @Lemur14 for allowing me to make this thread, it means a lot.

This thread can also be used for any questions students would like to post in here that are difficult GCSE questions since this is the main purpose of this thread.

This is the link to my website (where you can find out a bit of information about me) - http://jmaths.simplesite.com/

This is the link to the Grade 9 Paper - https://docs.google.com/document/d/1uVgHK8WDO_6DVwfy2FUJKnmrb2imxnYnfX7SU-OIEIA/edit?usp=sharing

I hope you find this thread useful and good luck to everyone
Sincerely Y11_Maths

Thank you so much! I really needed something like this❤️

sorry to ask again, but is this right for question 1? just making sure

also, can anyone point me in the right direction for question 5? like an equation or something

ah sorry I'm on the app now and I can't see anything either

Haven't tried this yet, but just from looking at it, while you have said it is supposed to be hard, I still think I am very far from being a higher level student even though I done well in my mock.
There's like only one or two questions I think I might be able to actually do.

Thank you for your input. This paper is free for anyone to complete so don’t feel excluded if you aren’t one of the higher level students, it is great to have problems which make you think! Feel free to try them if you like. I would be obliged to help with any questions.

@Lemur14 Care to crack out any of your devious grade 9 problems?