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

Jella, I think a lot of parents support you because we need to be tough and continue going when the going gets tougher. However the method you use to teach him by rules has the same problem as the earlier teaching you consider poor. You need to teach him how to think.

What Picklefish, Harum, Marco and Noblegiraffe said above is really worth your attention:

I agree with learning rules being problematic. .. Trying to make that into something to remember is actually making it harder. Noble

if he is learning maths by rules and mnemonics, he doesnt' really understand the basics of some topics, and should go back and learn them properly first? Harum

He's not just struggling with algebra which is actually quite difficult for most people, he doesn't seem to understand fractions very well. harum

A student should be able to apply their knowledge from more than one topic in a question. Marcopront

I'm not a nay-sayer either, nor the least bit upset, just trying to explain that he doesn't sound ready at the moment for being pushed through A-level, and needs to consolidate a lot of more basic GCSE work first. It's only sensible. It's not something the school could provide, but since you're doing it one to one, you might well take that opportunity. But why not actually do that, instead of blaming books/teachers etc? Why not accept that if he is learning maths by rules and mnemonics, he doesnt' really understand the basics of some topics, and should go back and learn them properly first? He would have a much better chance of doing well at A-level then.

I'm not a naysayer. I'm sure you can push your son through A Level Maths if you really want to (though I'm not sure how well he will do). I do however think that perhaps he might be happier if he played to his strengths and aimed towards something that he can really excel in. Or at least enjoy doing. Most people don't enjoy doing things that they aren't very good at.

Just want to point out that you can make sociology very statistical if you want to...

I think you're the only upset one - upset with the teachers, upset with the textbook!

He's not just struggling with algebra which is actually quite difficult for most people, he doesn't seem to understand fractions very well. I think pushing him towards a maths-based degree course would be at best very unkind and at worst really damage his self-esteem and idea of himself as a person who can succeed at hard stuff. OP, what subjects did your son get A or A* in?

The OP appears to think that a textbook should have the scope of a distance-learning course. AS+A2 maths would be delivered over around 400 hours. I did an OU foundation course a few years ago which was sized at about 400 hours and the teaching material was four large books, four DVDs and a sizeable amount of online material. A Level maths textbooks, not so much. They're not meant for self-instruction, they're meant as an adjunct to a properly designed and structures course of instruction. Presumably, as a maths genius, the OP is perfectly able to construct such a course for her high-flying son.

From what you have said, he is struggling with some of the algebra at the beginning of C1, doesn't that suggest something to you?
When he did badly at school you blamed the school, when he is having problems now you are blaming the book. Who will you blame next?
A maths textbook is there to give a few examples to remind students but it is to supplement the teacher and then to provide lots of questions. All questions in an exercise will be related but different, you cannot give an example of every type. A student should be able to apply their knowledge from more than one topic in a question.

I'm beginning to think this thread is a wind-up!

Jella, why don't you write to a publisher or Michael Gove and ask to be made an adviser?

A school textbook is not intended to be a self-study guide. It is intended to be a tool which a teacher can use to make his/her life a bit easier - in the case of maths it saves having to devise thousands of repetitive exercises and examples. It is still the teacher's role to teach - a role which you have now assumed in the case of your ds. It is, therefore, your job to come up with the tips and explanations.

CGP specialise in self-study and revision guides, which is why their books are addressed directly to the student and are full of mnemonics, etc.

I agree with learning rules being problematic. RIP for example isn't a rule, you could actually work out the power first, then the root. It's just usually easier to work out the root first, but that should be obvious from the question. Trying to make that into something to remember is actually making it harder.

I think the remembering things is the key to someone being a good mathematician. During GCSE and A level DD2 remembered nearly all the topics she'd been taught as she understood them and how they fitted together. When she started the A level course some of her classmates constantly protested that they had never been taught topics that were being revisited - if you don't remember the work from GCSE then its a much harder job to build on that knowledge.

DD1 got an A at GCSE and she was certainly a "forgetter" and seemed to have to constantly relearn maths topics every time she took an exam. She definitely would have found A level maths difficult.

I think if you are studying yourself, one textbook isn't enough. If I wanted to master a new topic before teaching it, I'd look at various sources.

Have you got the blue book? We use the black book, but for OCR (same authors) and it's pretty good. Have you also got a password for mymaths? That should give you the variety of approaches you are hoping for.

Jella2u - neither of my sons did a GCSE further maths, but also neither had problems at AS or A2 maths.

Perhaps it would be more helpful to get the GCSE guide and start there with your DS. That way you can over any areas he hasn't fully understood.

Learning rules is the wrong way to try to understand Maths.

It doesn't remind you that if you get a fraction over a fraction to just turn it into a horizontal form i.e. fraction divided by fraction and to do as you've always done (change the sign, flip second fraction).

I'm not being deliberately difficult, I promise. But as a student who was not naturally suited to Maths as a discipline and yet got a higher grade than your son at O Level before the whole grade inflation business, would this not be the natural thing to do if you understand what you are doing? I mean, if you're not getting this as a normal thing that makes sense, is Maths the thing that you should be studying? Maths at A Level is not about learning rules. It is about learning ways of thinking. If you haven't got the idea of how this works, learning rules of how to do it won't help in the long run. And it especially won't help once the Maths gets harder at degree level, which it really really does. Someone said upthread that Maths at A Level turns into a different subject and I agree with that. I'd also say that Physics and Chemistry at degree level turn into subjects which suddenly need far more higher level Maths to do properly. I would imagine that Engineering which is largely Physics-based would be much the same.

If you haven't internalised the idea of dividing a fraction by a fraction at this stage to the extent that it's a normal and natural thing to do, degree level Maths in a science based course is going to be absolutely horrible for you.

I also think this has been an interesting thread. I have a daughter who is still only at Primary school and have been interested to see how her teachers have picked up on her better than average number skills and are constantly telling me how she will be good at Maths. That may or not be the case but I'm slightly rolly eyed at the idea that number skills are the same as Maths. I don't think this is the case.

yes I'd agree that the examples about fractions and indices and so on are pretty standard for higher level GCSE, and I'd certainly expect pupils not to need those sorts of tips even when doing GCSE (I don't teach A level). The more tips/tricks/mnemonics etc someone needs, the more I worry that they haven't really understood something, because for most of the algebra/number type topics, if you get why things work, you just know how to do it because that's how it has to be, rather than needing to learn and remember specific methods. I teach methods and memory tricks and so on to the ones who want to do well on the exam but aren't getting it intuitively, but it's a different type of pupil who wants that.

(And don't get me started on those formula triangles they teach, so that pupils are confident that they know how to do various problems, but without any idea of how to rearrange equations or why they are doing the triangle or what happens if they remember it wrongly or forget which bit is times or divide! Again, useful as a memory trick for students who need to be able to do them to pass an exam; useful for students who do get it who want a shortcut; but awful when it's the only explanation they ever get, and then later on struggle because they don't know how to do algebra).

(sorry, a bit of a sidetrack)

Glad your son has to to fill in all the gaps of what he missed in GCSE; that's the sort of thing that he probably wouldn't be able to get without the one-to-one help.

I agree, the teacher is the one to give extra examples and hints and tips.

To be fair to the book, I think with your surds example, they are reasonable to assume that an a-level student knows how to simplify a fraction.

With factorising where a>1, is the method in the book the one where you multiply a by c, then find two factors which add together to give b? I love that method, but if a and c are large, finding the right factors of the product can be tricky as C1 is non-calculator. Most students don't even attempt to use it and factorise by inspection and trial and error instead. This is usually quite straightforward if a is prime, as it usually is.

What is RIP, by the way?

I assume the Edexcel book isn't a self-study guide (unlike the CGP book). It's assumed the teacher will give the students tips - that's one of the reasons they're there!

I agree. Not sure waffling would get me very far in a maths exam...

I do think this has been an interesting thread.

Ds has just finished year 7 near the top of his top set for maths, doing level 7 work. The teacher at parents evening told us that the entire set were at Gcse grade C level then. Sounded pretty standard top set stuff to me.

But I wouldn't call him a natural mathematician or a good candidate to study maths at A level, just 'normally' bright across the board. But then he is a bit of an all rounder, academically. I guess I might over state his ability at maths if he were weaker in English than he is, does that make sense?

I remember a friend telling me ages ago that by far the highest proportion of A grades at A-level was in ancient Greek (which he had done), in order to illustrate how impossible it was to compare levels of difficulty of A-levels by the proportion of grades given. Very very few did it, pretty much entirely at independent schools, and a very self-selecting sample of people who had already done extremely well at Latin, as it was primarily offered to those as an additional extra. Anyone not good enough to get an A was probably never even likely to make it into the class. And yet nobody ever looked at the stats and said 'well if you want an easy A-level you ought to take ancient Greek, must be a doddle', even though they tried to make various false conclusions based on grade proportions for other subjects.

I suspect maths is somewhat similar - quite a selective group gets in to start with, and mostly those who are already very good at it. It's quite an all-or-nothing sort of subject, more so than other subjects, where there is that ability to know something about it, waffle, regurgitate a bit of what you remember, etc., and come out with some kind of middlish grade. If you don't get maths much, you probably won't get anywhere at all with most of the questions.

Maths having right answers can work both ways. I think it's easier to be adequate in English because you can read and remember and regurgitate to some extent, so a larger spread of ability takes it. But obviously not so many will get top grades. But it is harder to get anything at all right in Maths if you just don't get it so many of the contingent who are borderline will drop out before they get to exam stage or, more sensibly, just not take it at all. Personally, I found English much easier (late 80s). I got an A for Maths O Level and a B for A level and the other way round for English (Lit).