Frequency and Boundaries

Provenance: written 2026-09-28, against forge-exam-technique-guide.md and codex-formula-and-method-bank.md (both read in full) and research/veridian/WMA12-verified-facts.md (read in full, §1–§9, specifically §5 for the archive's real scope — 20 series with question paper + mark scheme reviewed, June 2019–January 2026; 17 of those with an examiner report — and §6/§7 for the per-topic citations the frequency table below is built from). Grade boundaries are not in the facts bank at all (checked directly: zero matches for "grade", "boundary", "UMS", or "threshold" anywhere in that document) — that half of this document instead comes from seven official Pearson grade-boundary PDFs fetched and read directly in this session (pdftotext -layout), listed with their URLs in Part 2 below.

#WMA12 — Topic Frequency and Grade Boundaries

#What this document is, and isn't

This is the SIGNAL-equivalent layer for WMA12: two narrow, real tables — how often each spec topic has been individually confirmed tested in the reviewed archive, and what Pearson has actually published as this unit's grade boundaries. It is not exam technique (that's forge-exam-technique-guide.md) and not a formula/method reference (that's codex-formula-and-method-bank.md). Nothing below is a prediction.

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#Part 1 — Topic frequency

What "N of 20" means here, precisely. The archive has 20 series with a question paper and mark scheme read (June 2019–January 2026, per the facts bank's own §5). No pass to date — including this one — has topic-tagged all 75 marks of all 20 papers. The counts below are a floor: the number of series in which this course's own research (the facts bank, FORGE, or CODEX) found and cited a specific, named question confirming that topic. A low count does not mean a topic is rare — every row below is a compulsory, recurring spec area (spec P2.3) that a candidate should expect most series — it means only that many series have been individually verified by citation so far. Treat this as "confirmed present at least this often," never as a probability, and never round it into a percentage.

#One fully mapped series, reused rather than re-derived

FORGE's own Part 1 independently extracted and topic-tagged every question of June 2025 against the real mark scheme (wma12-01-rms-20250814.pdf), summing correctly to 75 — the only series in the archive mapped question-by-question so far. Reused here rather than re-verified:

Note what this one series does not show: no dedicated arithmetic/geometric-series question was identified among Q1–Q6 or Q8–Q10 — it may be folded into the unread Q7, or genuinely absent that series. Sequences/series is still a compulsory spec area (confirmed tested directly in four other named series above); one series' mapping is not evidence it was skipped.

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#Part 2 — Grade boundaries

Real, published data exists. It is not in the facts bank (confirmed absent, per the provenance note above) — it comes from seven official Pearson "International AS/A Level grade boundaries" PDFs, fetched and read directly in this session. WMA12 is graded as an AS-level unit in these tables (Unit 2 of six), so the scale is A–E + U — there is no A* at unit level (A* exists only for the combined, six-unit International A-Level Mathematics qualification, not for this single paper). Two paper codes appear per series — the main paper and a same-boundary regional/retake variant (named "P2R" in 2024, "Unit 2A" from mid-2025) — and in every series checked here, the two carry identical raw-mark boundaries.

UMS conversion (identical across all seven series, printed directly beneath each raw-mark row): A=80, B=70, C=60, D=50, E=40, U=0, out of a maximum 100 UMS.

What this table doesn't cover. Only the WMA12 unit boundary is shown. The overall International A-Level Mathematics qualification grade (which does carry an A*) is set from combined UMS across all six units, not from this paper alone, and is not covered here. Series before October 2023 were not fetched for this pass — the seven above were chosen to cover the most recent two years plus January 2024 and October 2023, which FORGE and CODEX already use as anchor series elsewhere in this technique hub; extending further back is a real but bounded gap, not a claim that no earlier data exists.

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#How to use this document

• Use Part 1 to sanity-check topic coverage while revising, not to skip a spec area — an "N of 20" count is a floor on what's been individually cited, not a rarity signal, and every row is a compulsory spec item.
• Use the June 2025 breakdown as a real example of how unevenly marks can fall across ten questions (4 to 11 marks) — not as a template for where any given topic "always" sits.
• Use Part 2 to calibrate a mock-paper score against a specific recent series, not the whole-qualification grade — boundaries move by several marks between series (A ranged 48–55 raw across the seven checked), so treat any single boundary as indicative, not as this sitting's actual number.

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#Sources used

• content/veridian/technique-hub/wma12/forge-exam-technique-guide.md — read in full; source of the June 2025 per-question mark table and topic order reused in Part 1.
• content/veridian/technique-hub/wma12/codex-formula-and-method-bank.md — read in full; source of several named mark-structure citations (e.g. the four-series log citation) reused in Part 1.
• research/veridian/WMA12-verified-facts.md — read in full, §1–§9; source of §5's archive scope (20/17 series) and §6/§7's per-topic named citations. Confirmed to contain no grade-boundary data.
• Seven Pearson "International AS/A Level grade boundaries" PDFs (October 2023 through January 2026), fetched and read directly this session via pdftotext -layout — URLs listed in the Part 2 table.