Mel has always analysed the frequency of topics appearing on every GCSE paper (have we said Mel loves a spreadsheet!?) and during 2025/26 we looked specifically at the Top 40 topics that had appeared since 2017. From this, some funky posters for use around the maths department were produced which were closely followed by worksheets for use in the classroom on each topic, which were a small number of questions like the ones that had appeared on past papers (for Pearson). All of this was really well received by students and teachers alike and they were used in after school revision sessions, as homework and even in class when topics came up according to schemes of work.
Because this was so popular and fits with the brief of preparing students well for GCSE maths exams, there will be a new Top 40 released every November. The Top 40 for 2026/27 will be launched after the November exams and there will be new posters, new worksheets and video solutions for each topic … the plan is to release two or three topics every week on this page to prepare for the Summer 27 exams.
For now, here’s the latest top 40 topics that appeared up to and including November 2025 for Pearsons Maths GCSE (we hope to extend this to include a separate analysis for AQA and OCR).
