Real-World Percentage Power
Real-World Percentage Power
Sarah walks into a shop and sees a £80 jacket with "25% OFF!" splashed across it. At the till, she's told there's an additional 5% student discount. Meanwhile, her brother Jake just got a 12% pay rise on his £28,000 salary, but he's worried about the 20% VAT on his new gaming laptop. From shopping discounts to salary negotiations, from tax calculations to investment returns - percentages are everywhere in real life, and mastering them gives you the power to make smart financial decisions.
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Exam Success Tips
- Always show working: Even if you use a calculator, show the calculation setup
- Check answers make sense: A 90% discount shouldn't give you more than the original price!
- Read carefully: Is the percentage being added or subtracted? Is VAT included or excluded?
- Use multipliers for efficiency: 1.15 for 15% increase, 0.75 for 25% decrease
- Round appropriately: Money usually rounds to pence, percentages to 1 decimal place
Now try it yourself
Quiz · Question 1 of 14
What is the multiplier for a 30% increase?
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This topic in real past papers
Every real exam question we've found on percentage problems, with a full worked answer.
AQA Paper 1
Three of the four sittings we have full papers for test a percentage increase directly, either as a calculation or as a multiple choice question.
AQA Paper 2
Two of the four sittings we have full papers for present a character's percentage reasoning and ask students to judge whether it is correct, rather than simply calculating a percentage.