What the best (sheapest) way to get hold of practice papers?

[InstitutionCode]

Is there a secret I'm missing about how to get hold of some past papers to use at home for practice? I know you can buy them in WH Smiths etc but to get a handful in each subject is ££££

This isn't for this year BTW

Also, DS will be first for the new GCSE maths in 2017, so will old papers be little help anyway?

For maths, especially, I remember practice papers being the single most important revision tool when I did O-level.

When dd did her gsces we downloaded papers fròm the exam board websiteso it didnt cost anything

Most teachers will have them. I've got about 12 yrs worth of papers & marking schemes stored on my schools system that the pupils can access using our website. Some exam boards will allow you just to download them without a secure login.

There are loads of papers on the official exam board websites or if you do a Google search for the papers you want it'll bring up websites with older papers that will have similar style questions for more practice.

I would suspect that previous GCSE papers will be no use for the new GCSEs as the style will be too different, also too much extra content.

Exam boards will release practice papers for the new GCSEs to make up for the lack of past papers, however this won't be for quite some time yet. They still haven't managed to get sample assessment material approved by Ofqual so no one knows what the new exams will look like.

They are normally obtainable free from the Exam board websites. There are some other places that sometimes have the ones that are no longer on the website. There will be limited "practice tests" for the new GCSEs, but teachers will have access to databases of questions and can probably come up with a few more for practise.

I would ask school first and fit in with their revision pattern.

I have used xtremepapers.com in the past, but I couldnt open it just now, so maybe it has been closed.

Maybe www.mathsmadeeasy.co.uk/gcsemathspastpapers-higher.htm
might give you some help

Another thing, has he asked his classmates if they have any access to past papers?

My students are far more resourceful than I am in hunting down stuff like this

And what Noble said (as usual)

Usually the exam boards publish a 'sample paper' when they first change specifications, which will be better than nothing.

Not in the case of the new GCSE maths, the sample assessment materials were withdrawn, investigated by Ofqual and have been sent back to the drawing board.

You can download for free from exam board websites. In terms of maths current papers will still be useful to some extent as the majority of current content is still on the new papers.

Some of my pupils have completed every past paper that exists for 4365 spec as well as all the old modular papers purely to get as much practise as they could.

Exam boards also often publish examiners reports on their websites along with the past papers and the mark schemes. A levels ones I have been looking at recently on edexcel go through the paper and have lots of useful examples of pupils actual answers and why they did and didn't get the marks. The GCSE reports I saw were not as detailed but still have useful grumbles in them that help ensure you don't lose easy marks. I don't know about maths but its great for longer answers in subjects such as science. As soon as you start looking through past papers and the mark schemes you can really start to see patterns not just in the type of questions they want but how they want them answered- not always obvious from the syllabus ( which you can also find on the websites).