How hard was June 2022?
This is a full A-level set — three 2-hour papers, 300 marks. Paper 1 is pure, Paper 2 is pure + mechanics and Paper 3 is pure + statistics. The early questions in each paper are gentle, but the back end is genuinely stretching: 6- and 7-mark synoptic problems that chain several techniques together are where A and A* candidates pull away.
Where the marks are
Pure mathematics is about two-thirds of the paper (~200 of 300 marks). The heaviest strands are integration (substitution, areas, the trapezium rule) and trigonometry (identities and proof), followed by differentiation, exponential/logarithm work and algebra. Numerical methods — change of sign, the Newton–Raphson method and its failure cases — is a reliable 12–18 marks. Mechanics (~50 marks) covers kinematics, Newton's laws, connected particles, moments and vectors; Statistics (~50 marks) covers the binomial and normal distributions, hypothesis testing, probability and the Large Data Set.
Examiner pitfalls
Proof and 'show that' questions demand rigour: the trig identity proofs lose marks when a step is asserted rather than shown. In Newton–Raphson, candidates forget to comment on why a particular starting value fails. In Mechanics, the recurring error is not resolving forces consistently or omitting the assumption (light/inextensible string, smooth pulley). In Statistics, normal-distribution questions go wrong on continuity and on stating the conclusion in context.
Strategy
Pace at roughly a mark a minute and don't let a single 6-mark integral swallow 20 minutes — flag it and move on. Because pure content reappears on all three papers, fluency in calculus and algebra pays triple. Keep proofs linear and fully justified, and always close modelling questions with a comment on the model's validity.
Prediction
Integration by substitution, trigonometric proof, Newton–Raphson, exponential differential-equation models, connected-particle mechanics and normal/binomial hypothesis tests are near-certain to feature again.