To have not known kids have to attain grade 4 in maths?

It would be better to give them a list of stuff like that - there is no benefit in being able to remember it, in real life you’d just use the function on your calculator (app!)

@Kirbert2 many use SEN as a synonym for things like ASD &/or think it only covers academic difficulties, but the legal definition as set out in section 20 of the Children and Families Act 2014 is far wider and encompasses a lot of other needs.

I have seen you post on other threads I have been on and I think DS has an EHCP(??) so he must be recognised as having SEN by the school/LA. His SEN will be set out in section B of the EHCP.

Thanks.

No one has told me that he's classed as having SEN but it would make sense.

@Kirbert2 I am sorry to hear that though glad DS is in remission.

DS would be classed as having SEN.

He had cancer and he's in remission now but he had a lot of complications which meant a 10 month hospital stay.

He is getting academic support at school but he's now physically disabled so that's where he's getting most of his support at school.

It's not straightforward at all, for someone who is not good at maths, and clearly the pupils sitting the paper also found it difficult.

No, I don't think bar models have improved pupil performance. I don't think pupils choose to use them.

I think the arithmetic paper has improved pupils' ability to do arithmetic, but the loss of the calculator paper means they don't know how to use calculators and see it as cheating (which has to be trained out of them because 2/3 of their GCSE is calculator).

Obviously different ways of representing maths problems are useful.

Does anyone have any videos they can recommend on maths education around the world? I saw one a few years ago about South Korea

https://cdn.sanity.io/files/p28bar15/green/4f1b2e87049a6f3f896128672cca828136ed8b35.pdf

Here you go

Most gamblers would bet on 5 coming up next....

It's not straightforward, but the clues are there.

There's been a change in the way maths is taught in primary schools - with much more emphasis on using bar models to represent maths problems.

Do you think that has improved pupil performance or understanding at secondary?

Personally, I think diagrams, pictures etc are a great way to solve maths problems.

Examiner's report says most pupils gave a relative frequency, which is entirely unsurprising.

@Kirbert2 I agree there are other situations too. Although someone with a medical condition meaning they miss that amount of school would meet the legal definition of having SEN.

and other situations happen too.

My son had a serious illness and missed 5 months of Year 3 plus all of Year 4 except after Easter which is when he has recently gone back. Obviously he has a long time until GCSE's but imagine if that had happened during Year 9/Year 10?

Question 15 is one where the answer will depend on the how a pupil thinks critically.

To my mind the probability of any one number on a dice coming up remains the same every time. No matter how often a number has been repeated before.

I'd have said it had a 1 in 6 chance of being number 5.

Because it's not a straightforward two way table, is it? It's weird.

First issue is that they work out 4/9 of 36 - where does that go in the table? It doesn't at all. It's a total, not a value. The 'twice as many milk chocolates as dark' also relates to totals and not values in the table. The question would be made easier by having totals for each row and column on the table. Even then it's quite fiddly. Pupils would expect to work out the twice as many milk as dark using the table, but they have to go back to the question instead.

Is there an answer sheet to the test?

I'm an author. No maths needed (until I have to do my tax return, but two of my kids are accountants, fortunately!)

ETA - my degree is Creative Writing and Critical Practices.

I get what you are saying entirely. I left school completely with very little in the way of qualifications, having packed most in at age 14. Partly down to this sort of pressure.

Personally I think some subjects where I was extremely weak at like languages should have been dropped at age 14, and emphasis put on to Maths and English. We do seem to have high expectations of how much some people can learn in a relatively short time.

The AQA paper is one of 3 a student would have to do and get around 50-55 /80 on each one to get a grade 4 at GCSE. So they have to sustain over a variety of topics for 4.5 hours in total.

In y11 they therefore have to do this whilst simultaneously doing 8 or 9 other subjects, revising for all of them, doing upwards of 20 exams in total. For some getting a grade 4 in maths would be, as mathematicians say, trivial. For others it is an insurmountable mountain.

It's a Foundation GCSE paper covering up to Grade 5

Is the above test representitive of a grade 4 exam?

It seems that one was well answered

Students were able to make good progress in this familiar style of problem-solving question. A large number gave fully correct or almost fully correct solutions with a few just making an arithmetic slip or selecting the wrong answer.

Not all students understood the idea of ‘Buy one, get one half price’ for shop B and some had them all at half price or seven at full price and one discounted.
For shop C, some students used 0.16 for 1 6 and lost accuracy.

Many students worked out the discount for one or two packs and thought this was the total cost. Weaker students simply 16 from £11.40.

I've just looked at the value for money question.

First you have to have reasonable literacy (not great for dyslexic students).
Then you have to identify and do all the required calculations correctly.
And you have to not get 'lost' part way through the question.

Any individual step might be relatively simple but not panicking at the complexity, and then staying calm and ordered throughout the question (especially if you have largish handwriting so run out of space) can be quite hard.

Doing all this when you have just attempted 22 previous questions can be a big ask.

Just because children are taught stuff in primary does not mean they have internalised it and can remember exactly what to do as they progress through secondary.

I don't remember. It was 9 years ago now.

Why do you think that is?

Covered regularly in KS2, fractions are covered in KS2

How many times can you do a 2 way table? And it's the kind of thing that is cross curricular