AS edexcel pure mathematics 2024 exam help

hello everyone, ive never used this website before but im really seeking help.
in my mock before my summer 2024 mock i achieved an A, maybe not by much but i still got an A. i sat the 2023 papers for my mock
the paper i sat in the summer felt highly unfair and extremely difficult. i understand the topics but i feel like ive never seen the type of questions that were asked. not only that, the grade boundaries went up so i ended up with a D
i ask 2 things:
1. is there a place where i can study difficult maths questions?
2. if not, how come others did well, and what were they doing to score high marks in the paper?
thank you!

Hi,
I sat my A-Levels this June and received my results on Thursday. I got an A* in Maths, scoring 262/300. A-Level Maths was my favourite subject personally and I have a few tips on how I progressed from AS to A-Level. In yr12 I was getting Bs and Cs for maths mostly and by the end of the yr13 I was getting A*s and As mostly.
Firstly, your teachers are very helpful in explaining the content so don’t be afraid to ask them for help! If you don’t find your teachers too helpful then I’d heavily suggest going on YouTube and watching videos from “TLMATHS” and “ Zeeshan Zamurred” on a given topic. Personally I used Zeeshan Zamurred’s a lot more as I believe his were absolutely amazing. Typically in his videos he’d run through the main points in a topic/ sub-topic, which would enable you to do a lot of questions successfully, and then run through a few exam style questions to show you how to use/implement those key points. I believe Zeeshan was superb at explaining maths coherently and made me understand what to do quickly and efficiently. Once I felt confident, I’d attempt questions from the textbook and then go onto past paper questions/ examstyle questions. My main website which I highly recommend is “Revisely”. The website it’s completely free and complied so many exam style questions for every topic in Maths for every exam board, with mark schemes and examiner reports to go along with it. It’s so easy to use and it’s such a good way to quickly do questions and get more comfortable with a topic. Other websites which are good for attempting questions are “Exam Solutions”, “Maths Genie”, “Physics and Maths Tutor” and “MadAsMaths”. “MadAsMaths” has a lot of tricky and difficult questions especially, but I still mainly used “Revisely” personally, whereas others I know used “MadAsMaths” more.
Other great YouTubers:
“Bicen Maths” is great for understanding topics. He also has useful videos like “Everything you need to know for A-Level Maths”, which reminds you of key things in every topic which you should know.
“Mr Astbury” is very good for past papers and challenging questions. He has done walkthroughs of all past papers from 2018-2023, so when I was stuck on questions when doing past papers, I’d watch those videos and they were amazing.
“AITutor” has done extremely helpful walkthroughs on the2018-2019 papers specifically.
A-Level Maths is all about practice, practice, PRACTICE. I can’t stress that enough. I found the only way of meseeing incredible progress was when I’d do so so many past paper questions/ exam style questions on a topic. If you do lots of different questions on a topic, you’d become very familiar with the different styles a question can be presented and worded. This will be so vital by the time you sit your exam. By the time I sat my A-Levels I did all the past papers multiple times and all the mock papers ( set by Edexcel ) and practice papers ( set by Edexcel also ), on top of countless of exam style questions. Whilst that sounds quite a lot, I can assure you it’s very manageable! You obviously don’t need to do every single question you see, but doing plenty of different ones is very good! As you may notice, I keep referring to PAST PAPER/ EXAM- STYLE QUESTIONS, so please don’t rely on doing questions from the Edexcel textbook only as a lot of them are not worded the same and presented the same as ones you will see in your exams. I say you only use the Edexcel textbook when you are learning the topic for the first time or to consolidate knowledge. Other than that, use Exam-Style Questions!
My most important tip is DON’T GIVE UP! Please, please, please don’t be demotivated if you don’t get A*s or As straight away. In fact I never got an A* in any maths test I sat at school until around Easter. When I was doing exam-style questions there were countless of times when I wouldn’t get an answer correct. Same with Past papers, I wouldn’t even get A*s a lot of the time ( and that wasn’t even in exam conditions ), up until Easter.
Quality over Quantity is also important. People in my maths class would spend 9+ hours more than me during half-term breaks, yet I’d get more than them in tests. That’s not to brag at all. I’m saying this as you shouldn’t feel bad about yourself if you don’t spend as much time as others. My strategy of writing key points of a topic for me to remember, watching a quick video from one of the YouTubers I mentioned (when needed) and doing countless of different EXAM-STYLE questions seemed to be far more effective than some of my peers who were doing all the questions from the textbook and not doing challenging/different types of exam-style questions.
I don’t want you to feel overwhelmed with all of this information and you don’t have to use all of it anyway, you are your own person so do whatever makes you feel the most comfortable and most effective. I’ve tried to cover a lot of different points that’s why this may have been a bit long.
If you have any more questions or need some other advice, I’m happy to answer always.