Secondary school maths teacher Natasha Hall has highlighted a classic GCSE ratio question that is simple to work out but remarkably easy to answer incorrectly under exam conditions.
The tricky ratio question
The former AQA exam paper question states: "A bag contains 72 blue beads and some red beads. Blue beads : red beads = 4:5. Work out the number of red beads."
Natasha explains: "Most people read this as meaning that there are 72 beads and so they add up the two ratios and divide 72 by 9 (4 + 5). 72 divides by 9 to give 8 and then 8 × 5 (number of red beads) = 40. However, if you re-read the question it says there are 72 BLUE beads. So the correct method is to divide 72 by 4 (number of blue beads) to get 18 and then multiply 18 × 5 to get the correct answer, 90."
Exam paper errors
In June this year, an exam board issued an apology after identifying errors in "all versions" of a GCSE science paper. Tes magazine reported that England's biggest exam board, AQA, apologised for the blunder and was required to notify exams regulator Ofqual of the error.
Michael Turner, the exam board's chief commercial officer, emphasised that AQA "has processes in place to make sure that no learners are disadvantaged by it". He stated in an email distributed to exams officers: "We're sorry to let you know that there was a mistake on all versions of the GCSE Combined Science Trilogy higher paper 2, which students sat on Monday 15 June 2026."
In one of the paper's questions, pupils were told to "calculate the mass of a system", but the answer prompt indicated "mass of glider" - which would only constitute a portion of the system. It represented the second such error in little more than a week.
Insert mix-up
Students sitting a foundation-tier GCSE maths paper earlier that month unsealed their examination papers only to discover an insert containing material intended for an entirely different paper. One teacher told Tes that schools had received no correspondence from AQA concerning the incorrect inserts, saying: "In this series of exams we've had two erratum notices for minor typos (geography and physics) but nothing at all for this. Schools only found out via text and email from colleagues working elsewhere. Exams officers downloaded new inserts and rushed to print them. Some disruption to smooth starts, but exams started within the rules - still nothing from AQA now."
