Important update: AQA Certificate Level 3 Mathematical Studies
We’ve made some improvements to the Level 3 Mathematical Studies question papers
Published
Friday 24 Jan 2025

We’ve made some improvements to the Level 3 Mathematical Studies question papers
Published
Friday 24 Jan 2025
As part of our annual review of assessments, we’ve identified some areas to improve our AQA Certificate Level 3 Mathematical Studies (1350). These improvements will help to make sure that the content is assessed to the correct level of demand.
What will the improvements look like?
The papers will still look and feel like the papers students have been used to practising, there’s no new content, and there will still be Preliminary Materials, Formulae Sheets and Statistical Tables.
We’ll also still use contexts that relate to other areas of study, real life, the world of work or students’ interests. But the papers will include some small changes, such as:
To help teachers support students as they prepare for the exams this summer, we’ve set out some example questions to show the improvements. While we’ve made improvements to all papers, the majority of the changes will be to Paper 1 and Paper 2C.
What will these changes mean for assessment?
Although we try our best to set papers to a consistent level of difficulty year on year, it’s not always possible to do this precisely. It’s not until after all the marking has been completed that it’s possible to see how difficult students found the paper (compared to previous years) and so we take this into account when setting the grade boundaries.
This means in summer 2025, we might see the grade boundaries change. If there are any changes, this will be to make sure that we set fair and appropriate grading standards, so that it will not be any easier or harder to get a grade in summer 2025 than it has been in previous years. You can find more information on our website about how we maintain standards over time.
We’ll of course complete another review after the summer 2025 exams to see if any further changes are needed.
If you have any questions or need any support with this, please get in touch with us on maths@aqa.org.uk