All fortnightly questions
Once a fortnight we will be uploading a STEP question for you to try. After a week we will upload a video solution to the question so you can see how your approach compares to ours.
If you wish to you can upload your solution to the question. We will share some selected examples of student work with comments added, to help build awareness of different ways of tackling the question and give some feedback and tips. We are particular keen to have solutions which use different methods to those in the video solution!
Fortnightly questions 3rd October 2025
This STEP question does not require a lot of STEP knowledge, apart from factorising a linear factor from a quartic polynomial. This video shows you one method for factorising a linear factor from a cubic polynomial and you can use a similar method with a quartic polynomial.
Carefully drawn diagrams can be helpful, as can considering specific cases.
Fortnightly questions 19th September 2025
This question is about rewriting functions in a different form. No knowledge beyond GCSE is needed to complete the question.
The original STEP question had no question parts. We have included some to make it clearer how the different requests in the question are related to each other.
Fortnightly questions 5th September 2025
This question involves substituting numbers into functions, simultaneous equations, and a bit of very basic number theory - for example, if $p$ and $q$ are both integers then so is $p+q$.
If you have not met it already, the formula for the triangular numbers is $\frac{n(n+1)}2$. This is always an integer as we know that the triangular numbers are integers. Alternatively you could argue that $n$ and $n+1$ are consecutive numbers so one of them is even, and so has a factor of two. Hence $\frac{n(n+1)}2$ must be an integer.
