4 weeks out
Write one full past paper per week under exam conditions. Mark with the official memo.
3 weeks out
Use your marked papers to rank the topics by marks lost. Spend this week on the top two, with a short daily set of past-paper questions on each. Redo the previous day's wrong questions before starting new ones.
2 weeks out
Stop learning new content. Drill weak topics only — usually trig, calculus and finance.
1 week out
Write a final full Paper 1 and Paper 2 under exam conditions, a day apart. Spend the remaining days on short mixed sets of questions and on what you must know by heart, such as the reduction formulas and the Euclidean geometry theorems.
Night before
Review the formula sheet and your own mistake list. No new past papers. Sleep early.
Know the dates
NSC Mathematics Paper 1 is on Friday 23 October 2026 at 09:00 and Paper 2 on Monday 26 October 2026 at 09:00. Each is 3 hours for 150 marks.
Between Paper 1 and Paper 2
Paper 2 follows Paper 1 within a few days. Don't spend that time going over your Paper 1 answers. Switch straight to trigonometric identities, reduction formulas, Euclidean geometry theorems and one timed statistics question.
The morning of the exam
- Eat breakfast and arrive early.
- Bring black or blue pens, a pencil, an eraser, a ruler and an approved non-programmable calculator.
- Check that your calculator is in degree mode for Paper 2 trigonometry.
In the exam room
- Read each question fully and underline the instruction words: 'solve', 'sketch', 'prove', 'hence'.
- Show every step: method marks reward working even when the final answer is wrong.
- If a question stops you, move on and come back to it.
- Leave a few minutes at the end to check your answers.
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