The FTCE Mathematics subtest (828)

The longest subtest on the test and the most generous clock on it. Thirty-five questions in 100 minutes is 2.86 minutes each on our division, more than twice what English Language Skills gives you.

The four competencies

Two competencies carry two thirds of the skills. If you are rationing revision time, algebra and data are where it goes, and why algebra is the largest block shows the derivation and its limits.

What you are given

The Test Structure document lists an on-screen calculator and a mathematics reference sheet as supplied materials for this subtest, and for none of the others. That changes what is worth memorizing: formulas that appear on the sheet are not a memory test, and arithmetic accuracy is not the constraint it would otherwise be.

We hold the Test Structure document. We do not hold the reference sheet itself, because it is published on the testing vendor's site, which blocks automated access, and its contents are the vendor's copyright. So we can tell you a sheet exists and is supplied. We will not tell you what is on it as though we had checked, and any site that lists its contents should say where it got them.

The pass mark

A scaled 200 passes, and FLDOE publishes that as at most 63% correct. Sixty-three percent of 35 is 22.05, so about 22 right, and because the published percentage is a maximum a harder version may need slightly fewer. Rule 6A-4.0021(7)(c) states 22 correct items as the equivalent raw score on the forms used at the last standard setting, which is the same number from a different document.

Thirteen wrong answers and you still pass. That is the most forgiving margin of the three multiple-choice subtests, and it is worth knowing before you sit down, because Mathematics is the subtest candidates most often panic about.

How hard it actually is

Seventy-one percent of first-time candidates passed it in 2025, against 68% for English Language Skills. The subtest with the fearsome reputation passes more people than the grammar paper does.

The content level is why. The competencies cover rational number operations, ratio and proportion, basic two- and three-dimensional figures, linear equations and inequalities, the coordinate plane, functions, central tendency and simple probability. There is no calculus, no trigonometry, and the rule mentions quadratics only as an example inside a skill about solving equations graphically or algebraically.

The alternative-score route

Rule 6A-4.0021(12) names GRE Quantitative Reasoning 147, SAT Mathematics 540, ACT Mathematics 22, or CLT Quantitative Reasoning 20 as scores that may satisfy this subtest. If you sat the SAT or ACT after 1 March 2016, or the GRE after 1 July 2015, check the score before you register. The alternative-score route has all four subtests.

Our opinion

This subtest rewards arithmetic fluency more than mathematical insight, and the 100-minute clock means slow and correct beats quick and clever. If you have not done algebra in years, that is a real problem and it is a solvable one, because the syllabus is finite and the level is fixed.

Where our data is thin: we cannot tell you how the 35 questions are distributed inside a competency, only across them, and even that is our arithmetic. Nobody publishes more.