Is it usual to need a grade A GCSE to do A level maths now?

Instead he is now putting in to take Sociology with Criminality. As this course only requires a grade C English Language surely it was supplied to and taken up by the school as that "great little filler". Anyway son is quite looking forward as it comes across as quite a topical subject. It has an advantage in that it reinforces essay skills.

The academic snobbery here is breathtaking. So all the C grade students are just having their time filled?

Your son got a B. A good mark. Better than the national average.

He wasn't moved up a set because the teacher didnt think he was capable.

You think he is.

But even with your expert coaching he didn't qualify for A level maths.

And yet still you think the teacher is in some way disadvantaging him.

Let it go, and have some respect for your son. Allow him to take an appropriate course. One that he is really involved in.

My sixthform isn't much different in size to that and they make their options and then we arrange the blocks - most get their choices (a few don't get their first choices at GCSE but never heard of an A Level student not getting their original choices).
I think it would be easier for the teachers to have students who wanted to do their subject rather than just because it was the best of a bad bunch!

I think he should do maths with you as it is a fascinating, creative and challenging subject. There is plenty of youtube videos he can watch to help top up his knowledge. He will probably only end up with a D though.

Jella usually, if the student is capable of the harder work and has demonstrated mastery of the easier work, they would be moved up a set and given it. It isn't in the school's interests to cap grade potential at too low a level (this shows in value added in the league tables).

Why wasn't your son moved up a set? Did his results not merit it?

You also need to be aware that what you think is a job done when teaching your DS hard topics, isn't that straightforward. Sine and cosine rule might be 'easy peasy' when being taught a lesson on the sine and cosine rule. Many students could be drilled into correctly substituting numbers into a clearly given formula in a lesson which by its title tells them that they need the sine or cosine rule. Give them an exam which at some point contains a cosine rule question, not clearly signposted, in an unfamiliar context that perhaps requires a rearrangement or use of another angle rule to start and they don't spot it, don't know where to start or just make a complete hash of it.

I'm primary trained so this is a bit out of my comfort zone. But if you're willing to tutor him would it work if you covered the gaps from GCSE and then started on the AS level, perhaps doing it over two years. It would rule out engineering but might not rule out other science degrees and ensure that he was still doing some maths.

Jella - Am I understanding you correctly that the school makes them choose A Levels based on blocks of options? If so, that's awful!

One thing's for sure though - he can't do absolutely no maths work for two years before uni with science subjects in mind

You are absolutely correct here. It is a big problem in maths sixth form education. I think the possible plan is to introduce new qualifications to cover students for whom A-level is unsuitable, and make some sort of maths study compulsory post-16.

Cross posts, OP. You say he has science subjects in mind. Does he know exactly what he wants to do at university or where he wants to do it?

Captain technically yes, if you are sitting the Foundation tier and are aiming for a C, you will not need to be taught trig as it isn't on the paper.

In reality (in good schools at least) the level of paper a C targeted student will be entered for is a complete juggling act, as they can sit either Foundation or Higher. In most cases in my school, a C grade student will be considered a Higher candidate, and be prepared for that paper, which would probably involve being taught some select B grade topics to improve their chances. However, a C grade student may have their confidence knocked by being faced with the higher paper where they can't do most of the question and bomb out, in which case it would be safer to enter them for Foundation. When it was modular, you could enter a student for higher tier for some modules and foundation for the others, which was really useful as many could cope with higher statistics but not higher algebra.

What we do is enter D grade and lower students for foundation, but push to teach the top end C grade stuff so on a good day they might just grab a C - the B grade stuff would be a step too far. And if a C grade higher student is floundering, we may then downgrade them to Foundation.

That makes sense, noble. I hadn't really though about the correlation between levels and grades and other than the OCR syllabus I've never seen anything produced by an exam board that sets out content by grade.

Reading this really depresses me... This tiered thing and foundation thing, so am I right in thinking if they expect you to get a c you'll do Pythagoras, but not complete trigonometry, they don't bother teaching trig because they don't expect you to be capable of it? Am I completely misunderstanding?

OP I find your posts exceptionally arrogant and blinkered.

However, it was this post by someone else-
The teacher was unable to get round the desks because of being overweight and relied on checking with the top students they'd understood

That has really left me

Outrageous.

Clay, it isn't really just a school produced resource. While the grades of topics don't appear on the syllabus, they are widely understood. There is a basic equivalence between levels and grades, and levels are clearly defined because of SATs papers. At KS3, you could sit a 3-5, 4-6, 5-7 or 6-8 paper, so teachers would know what content was in each extra level to teach the papers correctly. Level 7 is a C, level 8 is B. When we had the old intermediate paper, there was a clear distinction between what was B grade content and A grade, because the intermediate tier stopped at B grade so teachers knew what topics they could leave out as they were A/A* topics.

The only grey area is A/A* because we've never had a paper that distinguished between these grades.

Maths GCSE papers start with easy questions and get harder, so on the higher tier paper, the A/A* questions will be at the back.

This fits in with ds's experience this summer - he is what I'd call a bright, competent mathematician but doesn't have a real affinity with the subject. He breezed through the IGCSE papers and got a very high A* (when he came out of the first exam he was pretty sure he'd only got one question wrong). But there's no way he'd feel confident enough to tackle A-level maths ..

That's right creamteas, maths is different to most other subjects in that respect. Pythagoras is a C grade topic, therefore you can have Pythagoras questions on the Foundation paper which goes up to C grade. Trigonometry is a B grade topic, so trigonometry will never appear on a Foundation paper, and Foundation students won't be taught it.
If a student is aiming for a grade B, then they will concentrate on the topics up to grade B and probably won't be taught A* topics such as the quadratic formula. So on the higher paper, there will be questions that they won't have a clue how to do.

I know the OP has an issue with this, with 'not teaching the whole book'. However, it would be impossible to teach all students the whole syllabus, maths is a spiral curriculum that builds on and is harder than the previous year's work. If you think of levels, level 8 is GCSE grade B content, so A* is effectively a level 10. Imagining it as chapters in a book, if a student gets up to Chapter 4 at the end of primary school, they would need to master 6 chapters to have covered the syllabus by GCSE. The able student who got up to Chapter 6 in primary only has 4 chapters to cover. So the student who went more slowly than the able student in primary would need to go through the material at a significantly faster rate in secondary than they did in primary to keep up with the able student. But they need to go more slowly to master it. Rushing through the book will just confuse them and leave them with a poor understanding of all the chapters, and with the later chapters that require a good understanding of the previous chapters, they are just hopelessly lost.
And that is why, for those students, we simply bin the last couple of chapters of the book and concentrate on getting a good understanding of the others. It isn't outrageous or poor teaching, it is simply a sensible approach.

I think that tends to be more of a school produced resource creamteas. The actual syllabus just contains foundation and higher level objectives. Although I think OCR have a legacy syllabus where the syllabus and exam papers were levelled by grade.

Sad, this really would cap aspiration. Some would just say "I only need a C"...

Hismum I don't think it works quite like that. Rather than graduated answers within each topic, some topics seems to be aimed at some grades and others not. At DDs school, their revision materials even lists the topics associated with each grade.

DS got an A for gcse and just finished AS. We did have a huge wobbly bit early on this year and has finished with A for maths and C for further maths. But his C is made up with an A and an E which he can retake and is cofident that he can turn it around.

But the A questions don't require any other skills than D questions, they just requires the confidence to apply all the same skills in combination to the problem that appears more difficult. The tiers system actually creates this barrier that to score A you need to learn A question by rote. If students know their BIDMAS it works equally well in D and A questions, no?

I got an a at GCSE maths (many many years ago) and really struggled with maths A level. I ended up dropping mechanics and only takins AS pure maths. I really regretted that during my chemistry degree, as maths was essential.

If your son is dead set on science or engineering degrees, he will need maths, no doubt. I agree with the suggestion above, revise the gcse syllabus and get him to sit another paper. Hopefully persuading the school to accept him onto the course. Or get a tutor and teach it privately outside the school.