Candidates who say they are "weak at maths" are usually not weak at the mathematics in these papers. The content is school arithmetic. What they are weak at is doing it in forty seconds, which is a different problem with a different fix.
You do not need to study more mathematics. You need to need less time for the mathematics you already know.
The topics that actually appear
The list is short, and it does not grow:
- Percentages — increase, decrease, and percentage of a number
- Ratio and proportion — including dividing an amount in a ratio
- Averages — including what happens when one value changes
- Profit, loss and discount
- Simple interest, and sometimes compound
- Time, speed and distance
- Time and work — how long two people take together
- Fractions and decimals — converting between them and percentages
- Number properties — factors, multiples, LCM and HCF, divisibility
- Simple algebra — solving for one unknown
- Basic geometry — area and perimeter of common shapes
- Data interpretation — reading a table, bar chart or pie chart
That is the whole syllabus for most screening tests. If your paper is a specialist technical one it may go further, but the advertisement will say so.
Speed comes from three habits
1. Know your conversions cold.
Learn the common fractions as percentages by heart: a half, a third, a quarter, a fifth, a sixth, an eighth, a tenth, a twelfth. When a question asks for 12.5% of a number and you see "one eighth" instead, you divide once rather than multiplying and dividing.
This single habit is worth more than any other on the list.
2. Know your tables and squares.
Multiplication tables to twenty, squares to thirty, and the common cubes. Every second spent reconstructing 17 × 6 is a second not spent on the next question.
3. Estimate before you calculate.
The options are given. Often you do not need the exact answer — you need to know which option is in the right region. If three options are implausible, the arithmetic is already done.
This is the skill that separates candidates who finish the paper from those who do not.
Work backwards from the options
In an MCQ test the answer is on the page. That changes the problem.
For algebra questions, substituting the options is frequently faster than solving the equation — particularly when the equation is awkward and the options are clean numbers.
For word problems, check whether an option can be eliminated by magnitude or by a property such as being odd, even, or divisible by something. You are not being marked on method.
Practise with a timer from day one
The most common preparation mistake in this section is practising untimed, getting everything right, and concluding you are prepared. You are prepared for an exam with no time limit, which is not the exam you are sitting.
Set a timer at forty-five seconds per question from the first session. You will get fewer right at first. That is the point — it surfaces which topics you can do and which you can only do slowly, and those are different lists.
A two-week plan
- Days 1–3: Fraction and percentage conversions, tables, squares. Drill until automatic.
- Days 4–7: Percentages, ratio, averages, profit and loss. Timed.
- Days 8–10: Time and distance, time and work, simple interest. Timed.
- Days 11–12: Number properties, basic algebra and geometry.
- Days 13–14: Mixed sets under full time pressure, then only what you missed.
Practise here
Attempt mathematics questions on this site in quiz mode, with a timer running. Start at the subject index, or search for a topic such as "percentage" or "average".