Further maths GCSE

Thanks Errol

I forgot about the ones in previous years are available online. The most recent sets are not available until next year I think.

The artofproblemsolving is a great website as well. completely forgot about that one. thanks ScottishProf for reminding me.

No need for pming, there are loads of the mentoring sheets available online, here:
www.ukmt.org.uk/mentoring/

Also have a look at what artofproblemsolving.com has to offer. Free online problems in the Alcumus systems, good textbooks (available from ukmt in the uk), online courses, though they don't have uk-friendly times at present so can't get the realtime experience.

It's worth asking for your DC to have separate work to get on with, and if you can commit the time, offering to provide it. Dependent on flexibility from the staff to consider it and, of course, will only work if your DC really would get on with it. Nothing venture nothing gain, though.

senior mentors also come from other unis. I think they usually have had success at Olympiads.

back - that'll be the one. The grade boundaries are always low anyway compared to most gcses - last year it was C 36, B 60, A 85, A* 114, A^ 144 out of 175.

younger kids can also sit SMC :)

var123
The UKMT works like this

1. Year 7/8 can do the Junior (individual) Maths Challenge. They only need y7/8 knowledge and concepts to do most/all of the questions. The top 3000 get invited to the Junior Kangaroo or the Junior Olympiad with the Olympiad is a lot harder. They get certificate if they get to a certain marks.

1. Year 9/10/11 can do the Intermediate Maths challenge. Same as the Junior, the second round is divided into groups, Some get invited Grey Kangaroo for year 9, Pink Kangaroo for year 10 & 11. The top scorers in year 9 sit the Cayley Olympiad, year 10 sit the Hamilton Olympiad and year 11 sit the MacLaurin Olympiad.

1. Year 11/12/13 can sit the Senior Maths challenge, similar to the other two, some best scorers sit the Senior Kangaroo. The very best sit the British Maths Olympiad (BMO) 1. The reason the Senior Kangaroo exist is to find any exceptional candidates that might not do very well in the Senior Maths challenge for whatever reasons. Top scorers in the BMO1 sit the BMO2. From the top scorers in BMO2, the UK squads are chosen for various international competitions. Notably, the Balkan Olympiad is where the UK normally does quite well. Ultimately, the International Maths Olympiad is the hardest and the best of all the pre University Maths competitions. Many of the winners have gone on to become famous mathematicians.

As the UK Maths challenges are only taken as one paper in one day. With some high scorers get to do one more paper so it does not provide enough challenge. Schools can sign up to the UK mentoring scheme by emailing the UKMT and sign up to their mailing list. Every month, 3 sets of problems, corresponding to 3 levels of the competitions, will be sent to school. Each set of problems consist of 5-10 problems. They are aimed at pupils who have got to the Olympiad round of each level so they are very hard and take time to do. My junior mentees normally can do 6 out of the 8 problems, the intermediate lot can normally do 6 or 7 out of 8 over a month period with some input from me. At senior level, pupils will need to have a undergraduate, I think from Cambridge, assigned to them so they can be given help if needed.

Another thing you can use is the weekly problem set by the King's College school of Maths. You can easily google it. They are quite good but it is not structured enough for my liking.

nRich is another source.

If you want to have a look at a problem sheet for the UK mentoring, pm your email and I can give you a problem sheet for your son to try.

I haven't got the timetable in front of me, and haven't memorised the boards, but she had first one this morning and second one on Friday morning??
Yes, she did say Even {insert name of the school maths genius} said it was hard....... ....then started telling me how low a mark they could still get a 'C' with

BforG, if it's the aqa igcse FM they all seem to think it was harder than past papers. Mine said 'nasty but good'

Actually var - the lack of differentiation in music drives me spare, so yes, dc that start secondary already able to play instruments do twiddle their thumbs or end up helping others in their groups (well, in my dcs' school anyway)

dd came home from "Geeks Maths" exam today (as she likes to call it, as, at their school it's something the dc predicted an A or A for their normal maths, get invited along to, and they do it as an afterschool club - no timetabled lessons ), saying it as REALLY* hard - that's the first of all the exams she's said that about so..... we'll see I guess.

he can do different work in the classroom though :)

If he had a talent in music, he wouldn't be asked to play scales for another 3 years

That's a bad example, because playing scales is very much part of practice at Grade VIII (as the noises around our house tell me daily).

If they're bright, they'll be able to find things to do. Buy them a Raspberry Pi and get them to code up solutions to the problems they're doing.

You'd have thought teachers would have resources such as problem solving type questions that a kid could get on with independently.

It's such a common thing that you probably should at least mention it at parents' evening - they may have a strategy with extension work he could quietly get on with but just not noticed he's bored because he's not making a fuss.

I'll pm you var :)

I agree that acceleration is not helpful but why should someone sit in their best class not learning anything for years at a time? What a waste of talent and interest.

There is so much more to maths beyond the very restricted gcse and a level curriculuum.

The easiest and least effort way for a school to stretch an able mathematician is to get them signed up to one of the UKMT mentoring programs as noble and others have said. The intermediate program usually does need an internal mentor, but sometimes ukmt will provide an external one. The senior program uses an external mentor but it is harder to get into that program.

You do need to intervene, teachers are so exceptionally pushed for time nowadays that if you have a very quiet very able student who doesn't make a fuss they may well fly under their radar and that's not fair for the student.

he either had the knowledge already or he learns something new, but it only takes a few seconds,

At GCSE, that's true for anyone who's going to go on to do decently at A Level. I'm certainly not a mathematician, but I did well enough until undergraduate level; I took fifteen minutes to do my O Level maths paper, twiddled my thumbs for fifteen and left at the 30 minute point. The same's generally true for most decent pupils. Accelerating their education rarely ends well, and is pointless anyway: if they do A Level maths at 14, what are they going to do next?

In other news, "talented musicians don't find GCSE music a struggle", "people who have a natural gift for languages and are already bi-lingual in X and Y don't find learning language Z difficult" and "good footballers usually aren't bad at golf".

He's got a lesson he can relax in. He'll be glad of that in year 11.

The way DDs school does it is good - the able kids can do FM (in class for set 1, optional after school club for others predicted A/A*). They all do normal GCSE in yr 11, and its up to them if they want to be entered for the exam. The ones who don't in set 1 can opt to just do extra past papers etc or they (and the after school club) can do it just to learn for the sake of learning. I can't see a flaw in this approach.

My DD's school enters the top maths set for maths GCSE a year early then spends Y11 on further math

As did (past tense) my children's, a top-10 super-selective.

They've stopped, because the evidence that it helped the people that went on to A Level to do better was marginal, but the evidence that slightly weaker candidates got lower GCSE grades than they otherwise might was overwhelming. The question is basically "does every child in the school who is entered early get an Astar? If not, why were they entered early?"

My DD's school enters the top maths set for maths GCSE a year early then spends Y11 on further maths and sits the GCSE at the end yr 11. It is seen as the best way of stretching the most able mathematicians and makes the leap to A level a bit easier.

Further maths GCSE isn't a requirement to take maths A level but it seems to help with the shift up to A level standard.

They don't list it in the school prospectus as an available option as only a few are put forward for it.

Lol, my brother was quite distressed that all the work he did for Government and Politics A-Level in 1979, was what my ds was studying for his History A-Level in 2014

Re the triple (separate) sciences - you don't have to have done those to do A-level. 6th Forms understand than not all schools have offered the same opportunities to all pupils so not everyone had the change to do the sep sciences. Same with the further maths GCSE - there aren't that many schools that offer it, so dc aren't penalised or considered lesser applicants for not having it.