GCSE Maths - Start Here!
Welcome to Your GCSE Maths Journey
Hello, and welcome! Whether you're the student about to work through this course, or a parent standing alongside them, I'm really glad you're here.
This is a full two-year GCSE Maths curriculum, written as a weekly blog post, designed to take a student from basic arithmetic all the way through to full Higher-tier GCSE standard. It's built for independent, self-paced learning, which means it's written directly to the student, in plain language, with everything they need linked and explained as they go. But especially in the early weeks, a bit of parental support alongside it makes a real difference, and that's completely normal — more on that below.
The Structure That Runs Right Through the Course
Every week follows the same shape, all the way from Week 1 to the end of Year 2, so once you've settled into the rhythm, you'll recognise it everywhere:
Monday to Thursday are teaching days. Each one has a short warm-up (recalling something you already know, never a preview of what's coming), a short teaching video, tiered practice, a quick mark-and-fix, and a one-question exit ticket to check it landed.
Friday is consolidation — a game or quiz, no new content, and often a printable for some pen-and-paper practice over the weekend.
Every 4-ish weeks forms a unit, and each unit ends with a proper assessment (more on those below).
The whole two years is organised into 20 units, spiralling from basic number skills through to the full range of Higher-tier topics — algebra, ratio, geometry, statistics, probability, and everything in between.
You can follow it start to finish, or dip in and out and use whichever weeks are useful to you right now. It's designed to flex either way.
Foundation, Intermediate, Higher — Every Single Day
Each day's practice comes in three levels: Foundation, Intermediate, and Higher. Pick whichever one matches how the warm-up and the video felt. It is not a fixed track, just an honest daily check-in. Some days you might do Foundation, other days Higher, and that's exactly how it's meant to work.
It's worth knowing this is a different scale from the Foundation and Higher tiers of the actual GCSE exam. This course builds toward full Higher-tier GCSE content throughout, regardless of which daily level a student is working at on a given day — the daily levels are about how a topic feels today, not a prediction of which exam paper someone will eventually sit. Plenty of students will do Higher-level daily practice on a topic and still be building toward a Foundation-tier exam entry, and that's completely fine, the two things aren't the same conversation.
How the Resources Work
Up to Week 8, this course leans on a small, consistent set of resources, mainly Corbett Maths for teaching, with Transum and Topmarks for practice and games. That's deliberate. Getting familiar with a small set of tools first means the student can focus on the maths, not on learning a new website every day.
From Week 8 onwards, I start introducing more variety: Maths Genie, Khan Academy, and others, so things stay fresh and a student sees the same skill explained by different people in different styles. Corbett Maths stays the backbone throughout; it just gets company.
Hands-on-Activities
Each week has a couple of hands-on activities you can complete with your child. These activities are designed to reinforce the concepts learnt during the week. Some children will love the hands-on activities; others not so much. They are optional but potentially very useful if you have a learner who needs to see or feel the maths. The activities do require preparation and input by a parent, so to make preparation easier, I have added a PDF with all the activities and materials for each unit to the units page.
This Covers the Full AQA and Edexcel Syllabus
The content here is built to cover the complete GCSE Maths syllabus for both AQA and Edexcel — the two boards' content overlaps by around 95%, so this course teaches the shared core, with board-specific past-paper practice woven in more as we get closer to exams in Year 2.
Assessments
Every unit ends with an assessment, 20 questions, the first 10 written at Foundation-tier GCSE demand, the second 10 at Higher-tier demand and getting progressively harder. Each one comes with a full mark scheme and a rough guide mapping the result to an indicative GCSE grade.
These are entirely voluntary. Nobody has to sit them. But I'd genuinely recommend it! They're a good, low-stakes way to build actual exam skills (working under time pressure, showing method, checking your own work against a mark scheme) alongside the maths itself.
If you do use them, here's how I'd suggest running it as a parent: print out the assessment paper and the mark scheme separately, have your child complete as many questions as they can in the time given, then mark the paper yourself against the mark scheme and talk through the feedback with them afterwards.
Marking their own paper as they go tends to undercut the exercise a bit — the value is really in doing it properly under a bit of time pressure, then getting honest feedback afterwards.
What You'll Need
A journal or notebook — for notes, worked examples, and written exercises. This gets used every single day, so it's worth having one dedicated to the course.
A standard GCSE-level calculator
Pens, pencils, a ruler, a compass, and a protractor
That's it. Nothing fancy.
On Timing — Please Don't Feel Boxed In
Each day is designed to take somewhere between 45 minutes and an hour, five days a week. But that's a guide, not a rule, and you should absolutely adapt it to what actually works for your child.
When we used this approach with my own son, we used a stop clock. When he was ready to start maths, he'd start a 60-minute timer, and he was allowed to stop it whenever he needed a break, go away, and restart it when he came back. Some days that happened three or four times in one session. It worked really well for him. It might not work the same way for your child, and that's fine too. Do what works for you.
On Prerequisite Gaps — Please Don't Worry
Every so often, a day's content assumes a skill from earlier in someone's maths education that a student might not actually have, this shows up most often with algebra topics that quietly lean on solid fraction or negative-number skills underneath. Where I can see this coming, I flag it clearly at the start of that day's post, and point to a specific Khan Academy activity to fill the gap before carrying on.
If your child needs one of these, or the week generally takes longer than planned because something needs more time to bed in, that is completely okay. They are not falling behind. It might feel that way in the moment, but a genuinely solid grounding in the basics pays off enormously once the harder Year 2 topics arrive; trigonometry, quadratics, circle theorems, all of it leans hard on the fundamentals being properly secure. Slow and solid now is a good trade.
Living Books (Coming Soon)
I'd like to build out a list of "living books" — the kind of engaging, story-driven maths books some families love weaving into a curriculum — as a companion to this course further down the line. Watch this space.
Found a Broken Link?
I try hard to give enough detail with every resource link, the exact video title, worksheet name, or activity, that even if a link breaks, you can search and find it again yourself. But message me on Facebook if you spot one, and I'll fix it when I can.
That's everything to get started. Head to Week 1 whenever you're ready, and welcome aboard.
Made with love, hot chocolate, and an unreasonable number of browser tabs.
Happy Home Education
💬 Spotted a broken link or an error? Message me on Facebook — I'll fix it when I can. ☕ Finding this useful? Consider clicking Buy Me a Hot Chocolate — it means the world.
