All Question Generator and Exam Practice questions have a difficulty level from 1 - 4, which can be seen when adding questions to a worksheet.
Exam Practice Questions
For Exam Practice questions, the difficulty level indicates how challenging the question is, using the following general scale:
- Difficulty 1 questions are the most basic kind of a skill, often with simpler numbers/expressions and intended to test basic understanding.
- Difficulty 2 are typical easier/medium standard exam questions.
- Difficulty 3 involves a degree of problem solving, potentially multiple steps and potentially multiple skills.
- Difficulty 4 questions are beyond usual exam difficulty with a high degree of problem solving, intended to be 'extension' questions.
These difficulty levels are an internal Dr Frost scale and are not directly linked to external standards such as GCSE grades. However, foundation tier questions are often around difficulty 1–2, while Higher tier questions are more commonly around difficulty 2–3. Difficulty 4 questions are generally reserved for more extended or particularly challenging problems, such as Maths Challenge-style questions.
Question Generator Questions
For Question Generator questions, difficulty levels are designed to help teachers compare the difficulty of questions within a particular skill and select questions that are appropriate for their students. A question's difficulty indicates how challenging it is relative to other questions within the same skill.
Difficulty levels are not intended to compare the difficulty of different skills. For example, a challenging skill such as 622: Solving linearly separable first order differential equations may still contain difficulty 1 or 2 questions if those are the easier questions available for that skill.