Mathematics · National 5
National 5 Mathematics is three units in one exam — expressions and formulae, relationships, and applications — with no coursework at all. Your entire grade comes from two papers, one of which you sit without a calculator.
What it offers you
Mathematics is the entry requirement for a huge range of degrees — engineering, physics, economics, computing and more — and the reasoning it builds is valued in every technical career.
What National 5 actually asks of you
Paper 1 — non-calculator
Shorter paper testing core fluency: surds, indices, factorising, fractions, straight line, quadratics and trigonometry. No calculator, so the technique has to be solid.
Paper 2 — calculator
Longer paper with the same content in richer contexts: trigonometry in triangles, vectors, statistics, percentages and reasoned multi-step problems.
This course is graded entirely on the question papers — there is no assignment or project to submit.
Exact timings and mark allocations are printed on the front cover of each paper below.
Topics that come up
Papers & marking schemes
SQA publishes the most recent five years of papers. Older papers and specimen papers live on their site — open Mathematics National 5 on sqa.org.uk.