The calculator decision
Why is OCR J560 Paper 1 a calculator paper, and how should students use it?
OCR simply orders its papers that way; the specification says all content can appear on either kind. What matters is the judgement OCR's 2025 examiners kept returning to: when the calculator helps, and when it gets in the way.
The J560 specification is direct about calculators: "All content may be assessed on either the calculator or non-calculator papers." There is no list of calculator topics and non-calculator topics. Instead, each paper tests the same content with a different tool on the desk, and a student has to decide, question by question, whether to use it.
What OCR's Summer 2025 examiners' reports said about calculators (quoted and summarised from the J560/01 and J560/04 reports)| Paper | The calculator problem | Other points the examiners made |
|---|
| J560/01, Foundation, calculator | "Candidates are expected to use a calculator on this paper." Yet "many used non-calculator methods that often lead to arithmetical errors." | Challenging topics included straight-line equations, trigonometry, population density, inverse proportion and bearings; no evidence that time ran short |
| J560/04, Higher, calculator | "even on a calculator paper, not every single question will require them to use their calculator." Using one on an indices question produced unmanageable numbers. | Truncated figures in working; missing brackets in algebra; "Show that" questions need working; proportionality equations not formed |
Read together, the two reports describe one skill seen from opposite ends. On Foundation Paper 1, students who did long multiplication by hand when the calculator was allowed made avoidable slips. On Higher Paper 4, students who pressed buttons on an index-laws question found themselves with enormous numbers and no way to show the method being tested. The Paper 4 report also lists "Many candidates truncated figures in their working, which often led to an inaccurate answer", a calculator habit of a different kind: copying four digits off the screen and carrying them forward.
Use it: arithmetic
On a calculator paper, any multi-digit arithmetic, any trigonometry and any compound calculation goes on the calculator. Hand methods there are a risk with no reward.
Pause: structure
If a question is about index laws, surds, algebraic proof or exact values, the method is the point. Work it by hand, then use the calculator only to check.
Keep it: accuracy
Store intermediate values in the calculator memory, or write them to several more figures than the answer needs. Round once, at the end, as asked.
That three-part rule is ours, built from the two reports. We teach it explicitly because it is not something students pick up from practice alone: a student who has only ever sat AQA or Edexcel mocks will usually have practised the non-calculator paper first and the calculator papers later, and comes to OCR's order with the wrong instincts.
Source: OCR, J560/01 and J560/04 Examiners' reports, Summer 2025 series, linked from the J560 assessment page. We summarise and quote the reports and do not reproduce any question.
