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

Except the Pass Mark is around 55% for Grade 4 - which has been mentioned on this thread.

Several times

Some papers here

https://www.aqa.org.uk/find-past-papers-and-mark-schemes?subject=Mathematics

If you look at the Foundation ones, you generally need 55% to 60% over 3 papers to get a 4. The total mark is 240 so I am sure people can work out 60% of 240 without a calculator.

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It’s lower if you sit the higher tier paper due to the difficulty (but if you fail to achieve a 4 on higher you get a U, not a 1/2/3).

It's not though is it basic numeracy is essential ,but there is far more than basic numeracy covered in GCSE maths which most people have no need for in every day life.

Nail on the head. Grade 4 is pretty essential for normal "real life" numeracy as required for most adults to live a normal life. People who can't achieve it are likely to really struggle in adult life. So it's entirely right that youngsters are required/encouraged to keep studying Maths to gain that base line numeracy level.

Because some people find maths difficult,
They find the wording difficult.
It's too abstract and not real enough.
Some people just don't get it.

Difficult circumstances happen too.

My son isn't high school age but has missed the majority of Year 3 and all of Year 4 minus these past few weeks thanks to almost losing his life to cancer.

He is now majorly behind academically but hopefully will be able to catch up by GCSE age. Unfortunately, cancer doesn't care about exams.

I think that's a question schools ask.

It's a shame there isn't an intermediate paper covering say Grades 3 to 7

It would be interesting to see the percentage who got 4 or more when doing the Foundation paper first time compared to the percentage who got 4 or more when doing the Higher Paper.

You could put them into 2 groups

LOL—your son is clearly very academically able. You, however, are seriously lacking in critical thinking skills and sound rather dim.

This has been standard for years - if you didn’t get a C back in the day you had to redo it alongside whatever college course you were doing. This happened to my brother back in 2008, it’s not news. Once they reach 18 if working they can obviously do what they want but if in college they must do it - if there are significant learning needs then it is a functional skills qualification instead

Me too. There are so few official ways for children to evidence what they can do, if they aren't GCSE type children.

I never passed my maths GCSE im.51_
When I went to train as a nurse I needed five GCSE,s at grade c or above including maths or a science and English I was lucky to have have two.science GCSE,s so was accepted on that basis.

Take a look at a foundation paper and you will see it covers a variety of topics:
https://qualifications.pearson.com/content/dam/pdf/GCSE/mathematics/2010/Exam-materials/1MA01Fque20170526.pdf

My daughter is about to retake maths for the 3rd time, her issue is that they keep moving the grade boundaries so she just misses out. Hers was the first year to have the covid allowances removed despite having her education disrupted she would have passed first time if those allowances had been in place.

This is wrong. GCSE Maths is bloody hard and mostly irrelevant to daily life.

That's not true.

If you do a Higher paper, you need a low percentage because it's a harder paper with harder questions.

If you do a Foundation paper, you need about 50%

I wish there was a very basic adding ,subtracting ,multiplying etc,qualifications for kids li!e mine who struggle
In.My 51 years I have never had to use most of the maths I w as taught at school.,but use basic maths daily.

4 is the new C, if they don't get it it may limit their future academic and employment prospects, depending on what path they choose to pursue.

I DID bawl my eyes out. It was 1993, and I failed the resit at college. They told me I had to do it again. I broke down at that point.

Reading some of the comments here reminds me of the young me, excelled at English, couldn't do maths, was treated like a thicko.

My heart breaks for kids going through this now, because the reality is it's a LOT harder to get by without it now.

I'm 50 and have thought about taking it again on and off throughout my adult life, but just can't face going through all that again.

Even though I understand why, now, I never got rid of the idea that, despite my 2:1 degree, that failure of mine made me stupid.

It's not the lack of the qualification that held me back, it's the opinion of myself I was left with.

They aren't that basic?

My son isn't even doing gcse, he does functional skills and it's not just adding and subtracting.

I think this was her point - what about the kids who are never going to get a grade 4? OP is thinking it’s cruel and pointless to make them keep on resitting.

They should replace the "grade 4 GCSE English and Maths" requirement with a a numeracy and literacy exam, with a fixed pass mark... nothing to do with how well everyone else does. Can be taken in Yr7 for the extremely able, or still be taken by struggling 18yos if necessary.

The English and GCSEs for those whove passed that already.

Your son is clearly very bright. You sound a bit thick though in all honesty if you have no idea at all why others might struggle to get a 4.

Are you aware that even on the Foundation paper there is algebra, trig, standard form, vectors?
Including in the trig having to know exact values for things like cos60? They aren't really 'basics'.

And have you seen the number of adults on MN who don't know order of operations and can't work out their pay rises when given a % raise?

If you don't have a 'feel' for numbers then you have to learn a whole lot of stuff that to you doesn't have an obvious thread helping it all make sense.