How to Prepare for Matura Maths: Basic and Extended Level, a 12-Week Plan

Every student who takes the Polish matura sits the maths paper. In 2026, 322,859 graduates took all their compulsory exams, and 88.9% of them passed the basic maths paper, according to CKE's 2026 results summary. That makes maths the compulsory subject with the lowest success rate on the list: Polish and English were both above 95%.

This guide is written in English for readers who need the matura explained from the outside: Polish students at schools abroad, students switching from IB or A-Levels into the Polish system, and parents who want to know what their child is facing. It covers the two levels, poziom podstawowy and poziom rozszerzony, using the terms you will see on the papers, and everything in it comes from the documents of the Centralna Komisja Egzaminacyjna (CKE), the central exam board. It ends with a 12-week plan dated to the May 2027 papers.

Two Papers, One Syllabus

The matura is run in the formuła 2023, the format introduced with the four-year liceum. (The older formuła 2015 still runs alongside it in 2027, for some earlier graduates.) Maths exists at two levels, and they are different exams, not two halves of one.

The format comes from CKE's informator for each level, the basic and the extended one, both valid from the 2024/2025 school year. The dates come from the CKE schedule for 2027.

Two rules decide how much each level matters to you. To pass the matura, you need at least 30% on every compulsory exam, including basic maths. You must also sit at least one additional subject at extended level (technikum graduates with a vocational diploma are exempt), but that result has no pass mark. Results are reported as a percentage and on a centile scale, and universities set their own admission rules, so check what the programmes you want ask for before you choose your extended subjects.

The rest of the 2027 calendar: the written exams run from 4 to 24 May. An additional sitting on 2 June (basic) and 3 June (extended) is only for candidates who could not sit in May and received their OKE director's consent. Results are released on 9 July 2027. If you fail exactly one compulsory subject, you can resit it on 23 August 2027.

The 13 Sections: What Each Level Adds

Both papers test the same requirement list, the maths core curriculum (podstawa programowa) in its 2024 version, published as Dz.U. 2024 poz. 1019. It has 13 sections. The basic level is a list of numbered requirements in each; the extended level is "everything at basic, and also" a further list. This table, built from that act, is the map the rest of the plan follows.

Two things stand out. First, the basic level has no calculus at all: section XIII is one requirement, optimisation with a quadratic function. Second, trigonometry at basic level stays between 0° and 180° in degrees. If you come from A-Levels or IB, you have probably met most of the basic content already; your work is in the Polish conventions, the proofs and the closed-task speed.

Open Tasks Are Marked in Stages

CKE requires an open-task solution to show the full line of reasoning, take the task's conditions into account and refer to the theorems used. The marking scheme then splits each solution into stages. The key one is overcoming the main difficulty of the task (pokonanie zasadniczych trudności), which earns at least half the points. Before it come smaller stages: significant progress, or a small but necessary step.

So a solution that stalls still scores, if the steps are on the page. A 4-point task can give 1 point for the first necessary step and 2 for significant progress. On the extended paper, a 6-point task where the main difficulty was overcome without error but a calculation went wrong later can still earn 5.

Both levels also include proof tasks (zadania na dowodzenie). At basic level the requirements name divisibility proofs, such as showing that the product of four consecutive natural numbers is divisible by 24, and geometric proofs. Practise writing them in full sentences that end by saying what has been shown.

The Calculator and the Formula Sheet

CKE's 2027 rules on materials allow a kalkulator prosty at both levels: a calculator that only adds, subtracts, multiplies and divides, and possibly computes percentages or square roots. No scientific or graphing calculator. You also need a ruler and compasses, and you write in black pen: drawings are done in pen, not pencil, and erasable pens are not allowed.

The school provides Wybrane wzory matematyczne, the formula sheet used at both levels. Its 17 sections run from absolute value and logarithms through sequences, trigonometry and all three geometries to probability, statistics and derivatives. The last section is a table of sine, cosine and tangent for every whole degree from 0° to 90°, to four decimal places. With a simple calculator, that table is how you get the value of sin 37°: learn to read it quickly.

Because the sheet is long, the skill is navigation, not memorisation. Solve every practice task with it open. By May you should know which page holds the arithmetic series sum, the law of cosines or the tangent-line equation without searching.

Diagnose Before You Plan

Before week 1, take a recent paper from the CKE archive of past papers and sit it cold: 180 minutes, a simple calculator, the formula sheet, nothing else. Mark it with the official zasady oceniania. Sort every lost point into five bins: concept gaps, method gaps, calculation slips, write-up losses on open tasks, and time.

Each bin needs a different fix. Concept gaps need the idea rebuilt with simple examples. Method gaps need a worked solution reproduced from a blank page a day later. Calculation slips need slower, checked practice. Write-up losses need you to compare your solution with the marking scheme stage by stage. Time problems need timed sets and a skip-and-return routine.

The 12-Week Plan for May 2027

Start on Monday 8 February 2027. Twelve weeks later, on Sunday 2 May, the plan ends three days before the basic paper. Each two-week block follows the sections in the table, and extended candidates add the "rozszerzony" column of the same sections in the same weeks. End every session with ten minutes of mixed tasks from earlier blocks; spaced repetition for maths practice explains why short, spread-out reviews hold better than one long session.

Weeks 1 and 2 (8 to 21 February): sections I to IV. Powers, roots, logarithms, percentages and compound interest, absolute value, quadratic equations and inequalities, systems. If quadratics are shaky, the quadratic equations guide rebuilds them. Extended: polynomial division, Viète's formulas, parameters.

Weeks 3 and 4 (22 February to 7 March): section V and quadratic optimisation. Reading graphs, the three forms of the quadratic function, its largest and smallest values on a closed interval, exponential and logarithmic functions in context. Extended: composition, limits, the derivative rules and optimisation with the derivative; the derivatives guide explains what you are computing.

Weeks 5 and 6 (8 to 21 March): sections VI and VII. Arithmetic and geometric sequences, trigonometry in degrees, the law of cosines and the area formula with sine. Extended: radians, trigonometric equations, sum formulas, the law of sines, sequence limits and geometric series. The guide to the law of sines and the law of cosines shows which one each set of data calls for.

Weeks 7 and 8 (22 March to 4 April): sections VIII to X. Plane geometry with a labelled sketch for every task, lines and circles in coordinates, angles and volumes of solids. Extended: intersections of a line and a circle and of two circles, vectors, tangent lines, sections of solids.

Weeks 9 and 10 (5 to 18 April): sections XI and XII, plus proofs. Counting with the multiplication and addition rules, classical probability, mean, median and mode, and one proof a day. Extended: permutations and combinations, conditional probability, Bayes, Bernoulli trials.

Weeks 11 and 12 (19 April to 2 May): full papers. Complete CKE papers in 180 minutes, marked with the official scheme. Review each for as long as the sitting took and rewrite every open task you lost points on.

Extended candidates get six more days. Between the basic paper on 5 May and the extended paper on 11 May, sit two full extended papers and spend the rest on the calculus and parameter tasks that cost you the most.

Pacing a 180-Minute Paper

Both papers give you 180 minutes for 50 points: 3.6 minutes per point. Keep 15 minutes for checking and the working rate becomes 3.3 minutes per point: about 3 minutes for a 1-point closed task, 13 minutes for a 4-point open task and 20 minutes for a 6-point extended task.

On the basic paper, work in two passes. Bank the closed tasks and short open tasks you can do at once, mark anything that resists for more than a few minutes, and come back to it. Closed-task answers go on the answer card (karta odpowiedzi), so transfer them as you go, not in the last five minutes. On the extended paper, read all tasks first and start with the one you are surest of: points are points, whatever the order.

Use the last minutes for the cheap points. Check that each open task ends with an answer to the question as asked, that solutions of an equation satisfy its domain, and that probabilities lie between 0 and 1.

Where Math Zen Fits

Math Zen has two matura paths that follow the same 13 sections: Matura: basic level with 51 subtopics and Matura: extended level, which adds 29. They drill numbers and logarithms, equations and inequalities, functions, sequences, trigonometry in degrees, the three geometries, counting, probability and statistics, and at extended level polynomials, parameters, limits, derivatives and vectors. Difficulty rises as you solve, and mixed practice brings back the subtopics you miss more often; the trigonometry topic and the derivatives topic are good places to start.

The app checks answers, not written reasoning, so it does not grade proofs or the stage-by-stage write-up of an open task. Finding the intersection points of a line and a circle or of two circles, sequence limits with the squeeze theorem and the derivative from its definition are only partly covered. Do those with CKE past papers and the official marking schemes.

The Bottom Line

The matura in maths is two 180-minute papers of 50 points on one 13-section syllabus. The basic paper is compulsory and needs 15 points to pass; the extended paper is optional, all open tasks and without a pass mark. With a simple calculator and a long formula sheet, the marks go to students who know the sheet, write every stage of an open task and have sat full papers before May. Twelve weeks from 8 February is enough to arrive at 5 May having done exactly that.