Year 13 OCR A-Level Further Maths (H245) in 2027

Year 13 OCR A-Level Further Maths is a linear qualification examined entirely in one series, and for June 2027 OCR has timetabled all fifteen of its A-level papers — six on Further Mathematics A (H245) and nine on Further Mathematics B, MEI (H645) — into seven afternoon sessions between Tuesday 18 May and Friday 18 June 2027. Every candidate on both routes sits their first paper on the same afternoon. What the school entered them for decides everything after that.

Both OCR Further Maths routes start on the same afternoon: Tuesday 18 May 2027

Whatever else differs between OCR's two Further Maths specifications, the June 2027 series opens identically for both. Y540/01 Pure Core 1, the first of the two mandatory papers on Further Mathematics A, and Y420/01 Core Pure, the single mandatory paper on Further Mathematics B (MEI), are both timetabled for the afternoon of Tuesday 18 May 2027. A sixth form running both routes sends both sets of candidates into the hall at the same time.

What each of them is carrying into that afternoon is not the same at all. The H245 specification puts Y540 at 75 marks over 90 minutes, worth 25% of the A level. The H645 specification puts Y420 at 144 raw marks (180 scaled) over 2 hours 40 minutes, worth 50%. An MEI candidate is therefore settling exactly twice the share of their A level on that first afternoon as a Further Mathematics A candidate sitting alongside them — half the qualification against a quarter.

It is worth being precise about what that does and does not mean, because the obvious reading is wrong. Y420 runs 160 minutes against Y540's 90, so it is 70 minutes longer than any single H245 paper. It is not a bigger core: H245 examines its Pure Core across two papers, Y540 and Y541, totalling 180 minutes, so the MEI core paper is actually 20 minutes shorter than the H245 core taken together. The difference is concentration, not volume. MEI puts the core in one sitting; Further Mathematics A splits it across two afternoons two days apart.

Both specifications are explicit that none of this can be spread across years. Further Mathematics A is, in OCR's words, “a linear qualification in which all papers must be taken in the same examination series”, and the H645 document says the same of Further Mathematics B. There is one series a year, in May and June. For a Year 13 that means the whole grade is decided inside the window described below, and nothing sat in Year 12 counts towards it.

The seven afternoons that hold all fifteen A-level Further Maths papers

OCR publishes its final exam timetables as a spreadsheet alongside the PDF. The June 2027 file for AS and A Level, Core Maths and FSMQ carries 267 exam rows spread over 25 separate dates, from 10 May to 18 June 2027. Filter it to Further Mathematics at A level and fifteen rows come back — six for H245 and nine for H645 — and they fall on just seven of those 25 dates.

Every one of the fifteen is an afternoon paper. There is no morning sitting anywhere in A-level Further Maths at OCR in this series.

Source: OCR final exam timetable, June 2027, AS and A Level, Core Maths and FSMQ (spreadsheet), read 26 September 2026. All sittings PM. OCR publishes it on its key dates and timetables page, and the spreadsheet is worth checking against the PDF of the same series before any date is treated as final.

Two features of that grid matter more than the individual dates. The first is the hole in the middle: after 25 May 2027 there is no A-level Further Maths paper of any kind until 10 June, a gap of 16 days. Whether a particular student actually gets that gap as revision time, or has already finished before it starts, depends on their options.

The second is that the two routes are interleaved rather than run in parallel. The afternoon an H245 candidate sits Statistics, 25 May, is the afternoon an MEI candidate sits mechanics; the afternoon an H245 candidate sits Mechanics, 10 June, is the afternoon an MEI candidate sits statistics. The subject labels cross over. A parent comparing notes with another parent at the school gates cannot assume that “the mechanics paper” means the same date for both children.

Which two options your child sits decides whether H245 finishes on 10, 15 or 18 June

Further Mathematics A is built from two mandatory papers and two optional ones. Every candidate takes Y540 Pure Core 1 and Y541 Pure Core 2, and the school chooses two from Statistics (Y542), Mechanics (Y543), Discrete Mathematics (Y544) and Additional Pure Mathematics (Y545). All four optional papers are identical in shape — 75 marks, 90 minutes, 25% of the A level — so the choice looks, on paper, like a pure question of content. Laid over the June 2027 timetable it is also a question of when the exam season ends.

Derived from the June 2027 OCR timetable rows above and the H245 specification's entry rule that all learners take Y540 and Y541 and at least two of Y542 to Y545.

Only one of the six pairs, Statistics with Mechanics, finishes on 10 June. Two finish on 15 June. Three of the six — every pair that includes Additional Pure Mathematics — run to 18 June 2027.

That last date is not an arbitrary one. Friday 18 June 2027 is the final exam date in OCR's whole June 2027 timetable for AS and A Level, Core Maths and FSMQ. Five papers sit that day, two of them biology papers in the morning, and three in the afternoon: Y545/01 Additional Pure Mathematics, Y434/01 Numerical Methods and 6993/01 Additional Mathematics. Two of the three afternoon papers on the last day of OCR's A-level season are Further Maths papers, and a Year 13 entered for Additional Pure Mathematics will be sitting one of them.

Which pair a school enters is a curriculum decision made well before Year 13, usually on what the department can staff. It is not something a family chooses in the spring. But it is worth knowing which of the six a child is on before planning anything around the end of the exam season, because the answer moves the finish line by eight days. For what actually sits inside each of those four optional papers, and how the choice changes the balance of skills examined, see our OCR A-Level Further Maths page.

An MEI Route A student can be finished on 25 May, 24 days before an H245 student on Discrete and Additional Pure

Further Mathematics B (MEI) does not let a school pick freely. The H645 specification requires one of three named routes: Route A is Core Pure plus Mechanics Major plus one minor that is not Mechanics Minor; Route B is Core Pure plus Statistics Major plus one minor that is not Statistics Minor; Route C is Core Pure plus three minors and no major at all. The routes are set out in full on our OCR Further Maths board page; what matters here is where each one lands on the calendar.

Route A is the short one. Y420 Core Pure sits on 18 May and Y421 Mechanics Major on 25 May, so the only variable is the minor. Two of the eligible minors are timetabled early — Y436 Further Pure with Technology on 19 May and Y433 Modelling with Algorithms on 20 May — and a Route A candidate taking either of them sits their third and final Further Maths paper on Tuesday 25 May 2027. Their subject is over before the half-term gap starts.

Route B cannot do that. Y422 Statistics Major is timetabled on 10 June, so no Route B candidate finishes before that date whatever minor they take. Route C, with three minors and no major, runs anywhere from 25 May to 18 June depending which three: Y431, Y433 and Y436 would end on 25 May, while any route including Y434 Numerical Methods runs to 18 June.

Set the two extremes side by side. An MEI Route A candidate taking Modelling with Algorithms finishes Further Maths on 25 May 2027. An H245 candidate entered for Discrete Mathematics and Additional Pure Mathematics finishes on 18 June 2027. That is 24 days apart, from a first paper both of them sat on the same afternoon of 18 May. Same subject, same board, same year group, same start — and more than three weeks between the two finishing dates.

Two pairings inside the MEI grid look like errors in the table above, and are not. Y421 Mechanics Major (2 hours 15 minutes) and Y431 Mechanics Minor (1 hour 15 minutes) are both timetabled on the afternoon of 25 May 2027, and Y422 Statistics Major and Y432 Statistics Minor are both on the afternoon of 10 June. The specification separately bars a candidate from entering a major and its matching minor together, so no one sits both; the practical effect is that two students in the same set can start the same afternoon and leave the hall an hour apart.

One caveat on Y436. It appears in the June 2027 timetable as a normal 1 hour 45 minute paper on 19 May, but it is not a permanent fixture of the specification — the withdrawal, and the last series it can be sat in, are covered on the board page.

How long your child is actually in the exam room: six hours on H245, six to seven on H645

Adding the durations up gives a figure families ask for and neither specification states directly, because neither knows which combination a school will enter.

Totals computed from the Exam Duration column of the June 2027 OCR timetable: Y540 to Y545 at 90 minutes each, Y420 at 160, Y421 and Y422 at 135, Y431 to Y435 at 75, Y436 at 105.

Further Mathematics A is the only one of the two where every candidate in the country sits exactly the same amount of time. Four papers, 90 minutes each, 6 hours, whichever options the school entered. The MEI figure moves with the route, and the spread from the shortest legal combination to the longest is 55 minutes — Route A or B at 6 hours 10 minutes against Route C with Y436 at 6 hours 55 minutes.

Note that H645 reaches a comparable total with fewer papers than H245 on two of its three routes. A Route A or Route B candidate sits three papers to an H245 candidate's four, and is still in the hall ten minutes longer overall. The MEI structure trades paper count for paper length, which changes what stamina practice needs to look like: a student facing a single 160-minute Core Pure paper is preparing for something no H245 candidate ever encounters.

What Parents Say

DP

Deborah Prior

★★★★★

Confidence and progress

My son was low in confidence after COVID and the gaps in learning were building up. Using this service helped plug those gaps, rebuild confidence, and improve his ability to learn properly again.

NI

Nicola

★★★★★

Amazing tutors!

We arranged maths and English tuition ahead of GCSEs and both tutors were brilliant. My daughter's grades improved, and by results day she achieved two grades higher than in her mock exams.

S

Saifan Khan

★★★★★

Great Teaching and Focused Learning

I attended an English bootcamp with Leading Tuition and the experience was excellent. The teacher gave focused attention to the small group while keeping the lessons interactive and engaging.

See more reviews on Trustpilot

Almost every Year 13 Further Maths student is sitting A-Level Maths too: the combined June 2027 calendar

Further Maths is rarely taken alone, and the household calendar that actually matters is both maths A levels laid over each other. OCR timetables its A-Level Maths papers on Wednesdays in June 2027: H240/01 on 26 May, H240/02 on 9 June and H240/03 on 16 June, each 2 hours in the afternoon. Mathematics B (MEI) sits H640/01, H640/02 and H640/03 on the same three dates.

Set against the seven Further Maths afternoons — 18, 19, 20 and 25 May, then 10, 15 and 18 June — the two sets of dates do not collide once. No Year 13 on OCR has an A-Level Maths paper and an A-level Further Maths paper on the same day in this series.

They do sit back to back, though, and that is the part worth planning for. Y542/01 Statistics on Tuesday 25 May is followed by H240/01 Pure Mathematics on Wednesday 26 May. H240/02 on Wednesday 9 June is followed by Y543/01 Mechanics on Thursday 10 June. A candidate on Statistics and Mechanics therefore has two consecutive-afternoon pairs inside sixteen days. A candidate on Discrete Mathematics meets a third: Y544/01 on Tuesday 15 June, then H240/03 on Wednesday 16 June.

The total load for a dual-maths Year 13 on H240 and H245 is seven papers and 12 hours of written examination: three 2-hour maths papers and four 90-minute further maths papers. That is the real number to plan revision against, and it is why we recommend fixing the paper codes and dates before anything else. The specification-level differences between H240 and H640, and what changes about sitting the H240 papers themselves, are covered on our Year 13 OCR A-Level Maths page. For how the four boards structure Further Maths differently from one another, see the A-Level Further Maths subject page.

How Leading Tuition works with Year 13 OCR Further Maths students

The first thing a programme establishes is which of the two OCR specifications a student is on and, within it, exactly which papers they are entered for. That is not a formality. An H245 student on Statistics and Mechanics and an H645 Route C student share a board, a subject and a year group, and have almost no paper in common; teaching them from the same plan wastes most of it.

From there our expert OCR Further Maths tutors work to the calendar above. For an H245 student that means Pure Core 1 and Pure Core 2 finished to exam standard by the third week of May, because both compulsory papers are gone by 20 May 2027 and everything after that date is optional-paper work. For an MEI student it means the opposite shape: one very large Core Pure paper on 18 May carrying half the qualification, then a major and a minor spread across the weeks that follow.

Tutoring is one-to-one and online across the UK, with past-paper work drawn from the student's own specification rather than a mixed-board question bank — a distinction that matters more in Further Maths than almost anywhere else, because Y542 Statistics and Y422 Statistics Major are different papers of different lengths examining a different amount of content.

We are rated 4.8 out of 5 on Trustpilot from 59 reviews, read on 3 October 2026. 91% of our students achieve their desired grades, and more than 95% of those applying to selective universities receive an offer.

Frequently asked questions about Year 13 OCR A-Level Further Maths