GCSE Maths Foundation tier formulae sheet: A complete guide

If you're sitting GCSE Maths at Foundation tier in 2027, your exam board provides a supplementary formulae sheet with every paper. On 5 May 2026 Ofqual confirmed the sheets will continue for the lifetime of the current specifications.

There are two things worth getting straight before you revise. First, the current sheet is NOT what the pre-2022 specifications describe. AQA's Appendix 6, Edexcel's Appendix 3 and OCR's section 6.02d all document the pre-2022 arrangement, where students memorised the shorter list and were given the longer list in the question. The current sheet is broader and sits as a separate Ofqual-sanctioned supplement.

Second, the Foundation sheet is NOT the same as the Higher sheet. If you search for 'GCSE Maths formulae sheet' and open a Higher-tier guide, you'll find yourself revising the quadratic formula, the sine rule and the cosine rule, none of which appear on your Foundation sheet. These are Higher-only content.

This guide walks through what's actually on each board's Foundation sheet for 2027, what you still have to recall, and where the three boards differ. For the Higher-tier sheet and broader context across GCSE subjects, see our GCSE formula sheets 2026 and 2027 guide.

Each board (AQA 8300, Edexcel 1MA1 and OCR J560) publishes its own Foundation formulae sheet under Ofqual's current provision. The sheets are inserted with every paper, Papers 1, 2 and 3, calculator and non-calculator. A clean copy is given to every candidate.

All three boards cover grades 1 to 5 at Foundation tier. Grades 6 to 9 are only awarded through Higher-tier entry. That means the content Foundation students sit is a subset of Higher content, and the Foundation sheet is correspondingly shorter. Items involving the quadratic formula, non-right-angled trigonometry (sine rule, cosine rule), and some algebra manipulation are Higher-only and don't appear on your sheet. Our Foundation vs Higher GCSE guide walks through how to choose your tier.

Foundation sheets stay content-consistent year to year, with only presentational changes possible. The current year's PDF for your board is the source of truth, verify against the current year's provision at publish time before your exam.

AQA's pre-2022 Appendix 6 split formulae into three categories: 'know, not given in exam', 'know or derive, not given in exam', and 'not expected to memorise, given in exam'. The current sheet draws from the first two groups: the formulae students used to have to know or derive are now printed on it, while the 'given in exam' cone, sphere and kinematics formulae are still given inside the questions that need them.

For the specific 2027 contents, check AQA's GCSE Mathematics (8300) assessment-resources page. The headline items below reflect what has been on the Foundation sheet in recent series.

Edexcel's pre-2022 Appendix 3 only listed four mensuration formulae (cone and sphere surface area and volume). None of those are on the current Foundation sheet, Pearson now prints them inside any question that needs them. The current sheet is the Ofqual supplement that sits alongside the spec, and its content matches AQA's: trapezium and prism formulae, circle circumference and area, Pythagoras, the right-angled trig ratios, compound interest and the 'or' probability rule.

For the current contents, check Pearson's GCSE Mathematics (2015) assessment-resources page. Pearson blocks direct PDF access in some browsers, so navigate from the main qualification page rather than trying to deep-link to the file.

The one thing to notice: Edexcel's spec body (the 1MA1 specification document itself) still only lists the four pre-2022 mensuration formulae in Appendix 3. The current sheet is the Ofqual supplement that sits alongside the spec, not an update to it.

OCR's spec text is the one worth flagging carefully. The J560 specification says: 'The assessment for this specification will not include a formula sheet. All formulae which learners are required to know are given in the specification under 6.02d. All other formulae required will be given in the assessment.' That's the 2015 design.

The Ofqual provision overrides this. OCR has issued a supplementary formulae sheet with every J560 paper from the 2022 series onwards. The spec body hasn't been updated to reflect the change, which means quoting the spec text directly as current practice is misleading.

For Foundation students, the sheet mirrors AQA's and Edexcel's content closely. The spec's 6.02d memorise list at Foundation level includes circumference and area of a circle, Pythagoras' theorem and the trig ratios. Compound interest is taught under section 5.03a (problems involving multipliers); its formula is not in the 6.02d recall list of the OCR J560 spec. The current sheet reproduces all of these, alongside trapezium area, prism volume and the 'or' probability rule. Verify against OCR's J560 qualification page for the exam year.

Note: OCR papers at both tiers are 100 marks each (not 80 like AQA and Edexcel), for a total of 300 across the three-paper series.

The quadratic formula is the big one. If you've seen it on a Higher-tier guide, that's because it's Higher-only content. Foundation tier does not cover quadratics by formula, you'll solve them by factorising or using a calculator table at most. The formula is explicitly excluded from the Foundation sheet across all three boards.

The sine rule and cosine rule are also Higher-only. Non-right-angled trigonometry doesn't appear at Foundation tier, so neither the formulae nor their application are expected content.

The area of a triangle in trig form (½ab sin C) is Higher-only too, for the same reason, it uses sine of a non-standard angle, which is Higher content.

Beyond these three, Foundation students still have to recall:

Circumference and area of a circle. C = 2πr and A = πr² appear in the memorise list on AQA, in Edexcel's G17 content (both tiers), and in the 'Initial learning' column of OCR's 6.02d. These are printed on every board's Foundation sheet, as are Pythagoras, the trig ratios, trapezium area and prism volume below, but knowing them by heart saves time.

Pythagoras' theorem. a² + b² = c² is Foundation content on all three boards.

SOHCAHTOA ratios for right-angled trigonometry. These are Foundation content; Higher-only trig is non-right-angled.

Area of a trapezium: ½(a + b)h. Area of a parallelogram: base × height. Volume of a prism: cross-section × length. All expected recall.

Straight-line geometry: y = mx + c, gradient, midpoint. Derivation territory, not boxed sheet content.

Sequence rules: nth-term formulae for arithmetic sequences. Expected to be derived, not recalled.

At content level the three Foundation sheets are close to identical, because they're governed by the same DfE subject content and the same Ofqual provision. The main differences are historical and presentational.

AQA's pre-2022 Appendix 6 is the most clearly documented of the three. It splits items into 'memorise', 'know or derive' and 'given in exam', which gives you a useful lens for understanding what you're being asked to do with each formula.

The current GCSE Maths formula sheet is the common Ofqual-specified set, printed with every paper from 2022 onwards. Pearson's pre-2022 Appendix 3 (cone and sphere formulae) is no longer the live reference, those formulae are now given in the question.

OCR's spec started from a 'no formula sheet' design, which means the current sheet is a particularly stark override. The spec body still says there's no sheet; the exam-day reality says otherwise. OCR papers are also 100 marks each rather than 80, so the paper weighting is heavier per-exam.

Our main GCSE Maths formulae sheet guide covers the Higher-tier equivalents and the cross-board delta.

Treat the sheet as a working tool from question one, not a last-resort reference. Students who only open the sheet when stuck lose time hunting; students who use it from the start of the paper find things in a fraction of the time.

Print your own board's current PDF (not a generic one) and physically slot it next to every past paper you sit at home. Build the habit of reaching across to the sheet, finding the formula, and coming back to the question. By the time you've done five or six papers with the sheet alongside you, you'll know roughly where every formula lives.

Memorise the short recall items anyway. C = 2πr, A = πr², Pythagoras, SOHCAHTOA, trapezium area. Glancing to the sheet for these costs time you don't need to spend. The sheet is a backup for the awkward or long formulae, not a replacement for fluency on the common ones.

For compound interest in particular, read the question carefully. 'Depreciation at 10% a year' means r is −10, not +10, a common mistake, and one the sheet can't fix for you. The sheet gives you the standard form; recognising when a question is really a compound-interest question in disguise (depreciation, growth of bacteria, population modelling) is on you.

For kinematic equations, label u, v, a, s and t explicitly before choosing which equation to apply. The question gives you the constant-acceleration equations it needs, but you still have to decide which fits the knowns. Pattern-recognition is on you.

Write the formula out explicitly before substituting numbers. Even with the sheet in front of you, examiners award a method mark for setting the formula up correctly before the arithmetic. Our guide to showing your working in GCSE maths walks through how examiners mark method steps across all question types.

If your revision runs on structured lessons rather than reading the spec cover to cover, Cognito covers Foundation-tier GCSE Maths for all three boards: AQA Foundation, Edexcel Foundation and OCR Foundation. Each course walks through every formula on your sheet with worked examples, plus a quiz block testing you on when to apply which.

The cone, sphere and pyramid formulae aren't on your sheet, your exam board prints them inside any question that needs them, but the mensuration topic block still covers them end to end, including the common exam-day traps around slant height versus perpendicular height on cones. Compound interest sits in the growth-and-decay topic area, with worked examples covering both growth and depreciation. The kinematics equations are also given in the question rather than on the sheet, but the applied-maths block walks through the setup so you're not meeting them for the first time under exam pressure.

The recall list, straight-line geometry, parallelogram area, laws of indices, nth-term rules, is covered under Geometry and Algebra. Working through those alongside your print-out of the sheet is the fastest route to being quick with the formulae you have, and fluent on the ones you don't.