What's on the Functional Skills Level 1 maths exam

Whole numbers up to a million, positive and negative numbers, multiplying and dividing by 10, 100 and 1,000, simple formulae written in words, squares and the order of operations. Then fractions, decimals and percentages: ordering and comparing them, finding a fraction or a percentage of an amount, rounding, and knowing the common equivalents like 1/2 = 0.5 = 50%.

Percentage work at Level 1 sticks to 5% and multiples of 5%, and ratio questions are simple sharing and direct proportion. It's the biggest area of the paper, so it's the one worth being genuinely solid on.

Money questions — simple interest and discounts in multiples of 5% — converting between units of length, weight, capacity, money and time, and reading scales on maps and drawings.

Then shape: perimeter and area of rectangles and shapes made from rectangles, volume of cubes and cuboids, line symmetry, the relative size of angles, nets and plans of simple 3-D shapes, and using angles to describe direction.

Reading and drawing tables, bar charts, line graphs and pie charts, grouping data, and finding the mean and the range of a set of numbers.

Probability at Level 1 is the scale from 0 (impossible) to 1 (certain), comparing how likely things are, and working out the chance of a simple event as a fraction.

The three areas are the same, but the demand isn't. Level 1 keeps the numbers smaller and the calculations shorter — usually one or two steps — and leaves out several Level 2 topics entirely: percentage change and working backwards to an original amount, compound measures like speed and density, circles and cylinders, estimating the mean of grouped data, combined probability and scatter graphs.

If Level 2 past papers currently feel like a wall, Level 1 is the sensible place to start. It's a real qualification in its own right, some apprenticeships ask for it specifically, and passing it makes Level 2 a much shorter step than it looks from here.

Work through one area at a time, skill by skill, rather than jumping between topics — and do a little often rather than a lot occasionally. Find the handful of skills that are actually costing you marks and keep coming back to them until they stick.

Then rehearse whole timed papers so the format holds no surprises on the day. ResitReady covers Level 1 and Level 2, so when you're ready to move up, your progress comes with you.