GCSE Maths Foundation tier formulae sheet: A complete guide

If you're sitting GCSE Maths at Foundation tier in 2027, you'll get a formulae sheet in every paper. On 5 May 2026 Ofqual confirmed the sheets will keep going for the rest of the current specifications, so you can plan around them.

Two things usually trip people up before they've even started revising. First, the sheet you'll actually get in the exam is NOT what you'll see if you dig up AQA's Appendix 6, Edexcel's Appendix 3 or OCR's section 6.02d. Those are from the 2015 design, pre-2022, when students memorised a shorter list and were given a longer list inside the question. The current sheet is broader and sits as a separate Ofqual supplement alongside the spec.

Second, the Foundation sheet is NOT the same as the Higher sheet. If you Google 'GCSE Maths formulae sheet' and open the first result, you'll very often end up looking at the Higher-tier version, which includes the quadratic formula, the sine rule and the cosine rule. None of those are on your sheet. They're Higher-only content and you don't need them.

The rest of this article walks through what's actually on each board's Foundation sheet for 2027, what you still have to recall from memory, and where the three boards differ. For the Higher-tier sheet and the broader picture across other GCSE subjects, have a look at our GCSE formula sheets 2026 and 2027 guide.

Each board (AQA 8300, Edexcel 1MA1 and OCR J560) publishes its own Foundation formulae sheet. The sheets are handed out with every paper, Papers 1, 2 and 3, calculator and non-calculator alike. Every candidate gets a clean copy at the start of the exam.

All three boards cover grades 1 to 5 at Foundation tier. Grades 6 to 9 are only awarded through Higher-tier entry, which means the content you sit at Foundation is a subset of what Higher students sit, and your sheet is shorter than theirs by the same logic. The quadratic formula, non-right-angled trigonometry (sine rule, cosine rule), and some of the trickier algebra sit in Higher and nowhere else. Our Foundation vs Higher GCSE guide walks through how to pick your tier if you haven't landed on one yet.

Foundation sheets stay content-consistent year to year, and the only changes you'll see are usually to layout or wording. The current year's PDF for your board is the source of truth. The best thing to do is open it a few weeks before the exam so you know exactly what it looks like when it gets put on your desk.

The lore around AQA's sheet is probably the most useful place to start, because the 2015 Appendix 6 told you exactly how AQA thought about each formula. It split them into three groups: '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 cone, sphere and kinematics formulae that used to be in the 'given in exam' bucket are still printed inside the questions that need them.

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

Edexcel's pre-2022 Appendix 3 was shorter than AQA's. It only listed four formulae for cone and sphere surface area and volume, and those were all expected to be given in the question. None of those four are on the current Foundation sheet either, Pearson still prints them inside any question that needs them.

What you get on your sheet instead is the common Ofqual supplement that sits alongside the spec: trapezium and prism, circle circumference and area, Pythagoras, the right-angled trig ratios, compound interest and the 'or' probability rule. Content-wise, it reads very similarly to AQA's sheet.

For the current contents, check Pearson's GCSE Mathematics (2015) assessment-resources page. Pearson blocks direct PDF access in some browsers, so if you hit an error, head to the main qualification page and navigate down to the PDF from there rather than deep-linking.

One quirk to watch for. Edexcel's spec body itself, the actual 1MA1 specification document, 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. If a teacher or guide quotes Appendix 3 as the current reference, they're reading the old document.

OCR is the one worth flagging carefully. The J560 specification actually 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 was the design in 2015, no sheet at all.

The Ofqual provision overrides that. From the 2022 series onwards, OCR has handed out a supplementary formulae sheet with every J560 paper, same as AQA and Edexcel. The spec body hasn't been updated to match, which means if you quote it directly as current practice you'll get it wrong.

For Foundation students, OCR's sheet reads very similarly to AQA's and Edexcel's. The spec's 6.02d memorise list at Foundation includes circumference and area of a circle, Pythagoras' theorem and the trig ratios. Compound interest sits under section 5.03a (problems involving multipliers), so its formula isn't actually in the 6.02d recall list of the OCR J560 spec. The current sheet puts all of these in front of you, alongside trapezium area, prism volume and the 'or' probability rule. Check against OCR's J560 qualification page for the exam year.

One other OCR quirk, which has nothing to do with the sheet but catches people out: OCR papers at both tiers are 100 marks each (not 80 like AQA and Edexcel), for a total of 300 across the three papers.

The quadratic formula is the big one. If you've seen it on a guide or a video, that's because it's Higher-tier content and the guide was probably written for Higher students. Foundation tier doesn't cover quadratics by formula, you'll either factorise them or solve them by trial on a calculator table. The formula is excluded from the Foundation sheet across all three boards.

The sine rule and cosine rule are Higher-only too. Non-right-angled trigonometry doesn't appear at Foundation, so neither the formulae nor the kinds of question they go with are things you'll be asked.

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

Beyond those three, there's a list of things Foundation students still have to recall. The sheet gives you most of them, but knowing them by heart on top of having the sheet in front of you is the fastest route through the paper:

Circumference and area of a circle. C = 2πr and A = πr² show up 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 without reaching for the sheet saves time in Paper 1.

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

SOHCAHTOA ratios for right-angled trigonometry. Foundation content; the only trig that's Higher-only 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. You derive these, they're not boxed off on the sheet.

Sequence rules: nth-term formulae for arithmetic sequences. You derive these in the question.

At content level the three Foundation sheets are close to identical, because they're all governed by the same DfE subject content and the same Ofqual provision. Where they differ is really historical and presentational.

AQA's pre-2022 Appendix 6 is the most clearly documented of the three. The split into 'memorise', 'know or derive' and 'given in exam' gives you a useful way of thinking about what the examiner expects you to do with each formula, even on the current sheet.

Edexcel's current sheet is the common Ofqual-specified set, printed with every paper from 2022 onwards. Pearson's pre-2022 Appendix 3 (cone and sphere formulae) isn't the live reference anymore, those four formulae are now given in the question.

OCR started from a 'no formula sheet' design, so 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 each paper carries more weight per question.

For the Higher-tier equivalents and a fuller cross-board breakdown, have a look at our main GCSE Maths formulae sheet guide.

Treat the sheet as a working tool from question one, not a last-resort reference. Students who only open the sheet when they're stuck lose a lot of time hunting; students who use it from the very first question find things in a fraction of the time because they already know where everything lives.

The best thing to do is to print your own board's current PDF (not a generic one you found on a revision site) 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 sits on it without having to search.

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 being fluent on the common ones.

For compound interest, read the question carefully. 'Depreciation at 10% a year' means r is −10, not +10, which is a mistake 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 will give you the constant-acceleration equations it needs, but you still have to decide which one fits the knowns you're given.

Write the formula out before you substitute numbers. Even with the sheet in front of you, examiners award a method mark for setting the formula up correctly before the arithmetic, so copying it onto your working lines is basically a free mark. Our guide to showing your working in GCSE maths walks through how examiners mark method steps across different 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 board prints them inside any question that needs them), but the mensuration topic still covers them end to end, including the common trap around slant height versus perpendicular height on cones. Compound interest sits in the growth-and-decay topic, with worked examples for both growth and depreciation. The kinematic equations are also given in the question rather than on the sheet, but the applied-maths block walks you 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.