New Maths GCSE is properly hard isn't it?

Thank you, this is really useful

Last year for Edexcel's Higher paper you need the following %:

4 17%
5 28%
6 40%
7 52%
8 65%
9 79%

Fair enough.. Thanks anyway

No it doesn't. Cant give a better answer as not an expert but it isn't that simple.

So does it go
90 per cent for a 9
80 for 8
70 for 7
60 for 6
50 for 5
40 for 4?

Does anyone know what percentage of questions they need to get right to get an 8 or a 9?
For a nine we have been told you need to get all the questions right, allowing for dropping a few marks for carelessness here and there. Sounds about right.

Does anyone know what percentage of questions they need to get right to get an 8 or a 9?

My DD sat her GSCEs last year. She did suffer from a lack of self confidence with Maths and was originally down to take the higher paper. She was getting low marks as she said she was freezing and panicking when she looked at the questions that are designed to test the higher ability candidates. Her school changed her entry to Foundation and she got a 5 which was more than enough for her to move onto college. I'd rather they used Further Maths to stretch the higher ability candidates, I think the higher paper has too wide a range to cater to, it nearly destroyed my daughters confidence and I'm very glad the school decided to move her to foundation.

Yes, the old GCSE was crap for the top end, but a lot of schools did Further or Additional maths GCSE with them which worked well and at least the GCSE paper wasn’t ridiculous for the rest.

I did the first year of GCSEs and all these subjects were there. Not in favour of making things hard for the sake of it, but recent Maths GCSEs have been pitched so low that there's no challenge or differentiation (sorry) at the top end and potentially very good mathemeticians can coast through years 10 and 11 before being smacked in the face with the big step up to A level.

I definitely did Venn diagrams at primary level,

Does the new GCSE include modular arithmetic, that other staple of "modern" maths in the past?

Write the formulae out, one each on a small card index type card, and blu-tak them to the kitchen wall opposite his place at the table, or somewhere he'll see them every day, then he can read one or two each t8me he goes there. They'll be learnt within a week.

I definitely did Venn diagrams at primary level, I'm pleased to see them back on the GCSE syllabus.

Thank you to @noblegiraffe for inspiring me to look up splitting coefficients. I now have a great new tool for quadratics. (Not that I suspect I will need it any time soon).

@noblegiraffe- brilliant, thanks!

Differentiation is new to GCSE. As is functions, and set theory.

And were all in O Level in the late 1970s. Possibly O Levels plural: I did two, a "modern" one (heavy on the set theory and matrices) and a "traditional" one (heavy on the calculus). For example, simple integral and differential calculus, up to volumes of rotation, were in both.

Of course, simple set theory was in primary maths in the early 1970s. Very modern, very fashionable. Tories hated it, of course.

Yep Rosie like Frendo said it’s not actually that difficult to learn them - the sin and cos ones at least. The table given doesn’t actually show how easy it is, because you can build the values up step by step as illustrated here: www.mrbartonmaths.com/blog/remembering-trigonometry-ratios/ the bit with the picture of the hand.
So you write 0 1 2 3 4, then square root, then divide by 2, et voila. Sin one way, cos the other. Tan is a bit trickier (it’s sin(a)/cos(a)) but maybe he could memorise those?

Obviously, once he has memorised them (and it doesn’t take that long, just write them out once every so often) he needs to be able to use them to answer questions, which is harder!

It’s how I remember the trig values, I can never be bothered with drawing out triangles.

A pdf list of formulae that need to be learnt:

qualifications.pearson.com/content/dam/pdf/GCSE/mathematics/2015/teaching-and-learning-materials/W148-GCSE-Maths-A5-Poster.pdf

Early 80's got A in O Level...
This bodmas.. thing is so odds...
But all the rest was there....

Oh I like that table and the gif - nice, thanks!

noblegiraffe me? I have no idea.

RosieLig,

There aren't many to learn.

Scroll down a bit for a table that may help:

mrlyonsmaths.wordpress.com/2015/11/02/remembering-trigonometric-values/

@noblegiraffe- trig exact values. Is it worth my son learning them? He’s aiming for a 6 (possibly a 7 but that might be wishful thinking!) It seems like a lot of work for only a few potential marks.

Did you sit the old Foundation paper? That only went up to a D.

My son is retaking his maths gcse this year as he is annoyed he got an A and knows he could have achieved an A*. I'm still trying to work out how I scored 82% yet came out with a D .

Interesting sashh, I reckon the current GCSE stands up pretty well against that. Obviously it’s got matrices on it which aren’t on the syllabus any more (they’re on further maths) but they’re not that difficult as far as matrix questions go. A lot of the questions wouldn’t be out of place at all on a paper today, except for the terrible layout and the use of tables for trig values.

What does strike me as better now, is that 1984 paper didn’t seem to have any reasoning. The circle theorem question, for example, Q4b, is 5 marks for working out some angles. Nowadays they’d have to provide their reasoning for all the angles e.g. OCD = 40 because base angles in an isosceles triangle are equal, so ABT = 40 because of the alternate segment theorem. In 1984, all they needed to do was write ‘40’.