IGCSE Add Math Past Papers: How to Use Them Properly

Past papers are the highest-value revision resource in Add Math, and the most commonly wasted one. The difference between students who improve with papers and students who plateau is not how many they do; it’s what happens after the timer stops.

Where to get official 0606 papers

Start with your school: every Cambridge school has complete archives of question papers, mark schemes and examiner reports. Cambridge International also publishes recent series and the 2025 specimen papers, which matter more than usual this cycle, because they demonstrate the current format. The major revision platforms host organised 0606 archives as well. What you need for each session: the question paper (both papers), the mark scheme, and ideally the examiner report, that last document is an underused goldmine listing exactly what real candidates got wrong.

Which papers match the current syllabus

The 2025–2027 syllabus made three changes that affect old papers:

1. Paper 1 is now non-calculator. Older Paper 1s assumed a calculator. They’re still excellent practice, just do them calculator-free, and accept that one or two parts may feel arithmetic-heavier than a real current paper would be.
2. Indices and surds are no longer a taught topic. Skip questions dedicated purely to them; the skills themselves still appear inside other questions, especially on Paper 1.
3. Coordinate geometry of the circle is new. No old paper tests it. Use the specimen papers and recent sessions for circle questions, and expect it to be examined, because new topics always are.

Everything else, the 14-topic core, the question style, the mark-scheme structure, carries over.

The marking routine that creates grades

Do the paper timed (2 hours, exam conditions, no calculator for Paper 1). Then:

1. Mark with the real mark scheme, awarding M, A and B marks honestly, partial credit where the scheme gives it, nothing where it doesn’t. Learn the system in how to show working for full marks.
2. Log every dropped mark in one of three categories: knowledge (didn’t know the method), technique (knew it, presented it badly or misread the command word), or care (slip, misread, rounding). Three causes, three different fixes, revising content fixes only the first.
3. Re-do failed questions cold, one week later. Not re-read: re-do, blank page. A question isn’t fixed until it’s been re-solved without help.
4. Track your percentage against your target using a grade-boundaries-based marks budget.

Eight to twelve papers through this loop, in the final 8–10 weeks, is the engine of most A* stories, it’s the spine of our 8-week revision plan.

Building a solution library

When a question defeats you, the mark scheme often shows what without showing why, schemes are written for examiners, not learners. Keep your own annotated solutions for every question that beat you: the full working plus one sentence on what the trigger should have been (“perpendicular $\Rightarrow m_1 m_2 = -1$”). Over weeks this becomes a personal weak-spot encyclopedia. (A free, fully worked 0606 solution library is on our roadmap for this site.)

When papers alone stop working

A plateau across three consecutive papers means the feedback loop is the bottleneck: you can’t see your own technique faults. That’s the point where an hour a week with a specialist changes the slope. Teacher Rig marks students’ papers against 0606 schemes line by line and turns the error log into the lesson plan. First hour is a free trial, online anywhere in Malaysia, book on WhatsApp.