Yearly warning not to take A-level maths with less than a 7 at GCSE

@Araminta1003 the postcode you live in and the school you go to are two different criteria for a contextual offer. You can have a contextual offer based on a personal situation, school wouldn't make a difference.

Not sure if the curriculum is objectively harder. There was a period of coursework…. The A for the decade or something before 1-9 was replaced with a 7. let them have it 🤣

“6th forms do contextualise. Tons of the selective ones prioritise FSM, looked after or previously looked after, PP kids and kids local low attaining partner schools as a 1st priority after EHCPs. Look up the admissions criteria for Harris Westminster, LAET, Brampton Manor etc etc.
And honestly, I'm not sure what to say as to your London comment. London is not the whole of the country and London has plenty of schools like the ones I've described, 2 of our local ones are like this and my daughter briefly went to one. They just had a 28% pass rate at one and 40% at the other. It's a record year for the second- they've never had higher than 35% before outsife of COVID! Both regularly have gangs outside and huge problems with county lines. Just because it's not on your doorstep, doesn't mean it doesn't exist and tbh that's not my point. The point is, no one in the school you describe would get a contextual offer based on their school, because that's not a low attaining school! It's not just about the type.”

@Foxesandsquirrels - believe what you want. Plenty of kids from the school I described most definitely get contextual offers from a variety of Russell Group unis, coupled with their postcode which happens to tick some marker. It is a well known fact locally. Just like plenty of high achieving Sixth Forms have lapped up all the top achievers leaving private schools this week.
You cannot have a situation where successive Governments underfund schools and unis and yet insist on high standards. Those institutions will tick the boxes superficially, but protect their own staff and achievements, by taking what makes their lives easier. That is just a fact of life. The politicians and press will spin whatever story that suits them.

I looked into this once as my children were saying my A in gcse maths from 1992 was the same as a 7 today. Something like 9% of candidates got an A then, so it equates to a 8 or 9.

I think a 90s B is equiv to a 6 and 7 - top 7 might have got an A. Based on %s getting it…I looked at the proportions a while back and total % getting B+ then and 6+ now was around the same….

@Pythag sorry I meant not a candidate for A level maths! She's finally qualified for an oral modifier so hopefully will get a modified paper for her retakes in maths in Nov. It just slightly changes the questions to make them easier to understand. She got a 3, very close to a 4 so hopefully it'll help. But yes, I completely understand the application to real life thing, it makes sense but there is a lot more of it on the foundation papers than the higher ones.

Why do you say a 90s B is a 7 @Pythag?

I see. Generally maths GCSE and maths A-level examiners do their best to try and make sure that people are not excluded from maths due to their English language skills. Exams go through several rounds of review to ensure that they are clear, plain English and unambiguous.

However, both GCSE and A-level include worded questions (also called modelling questions), Edexcel A-level in particular has a lot of this). The aim of these questions is to ensure people can apply maths to real life. Some people (particularly people that have low literacy) hate them, but they are part of maths. You can get better at them via practice and learning how to turn prose into relevant equations!

I see ok. My DD is not a candidate for GCSE maths but she has a language processing disorder and finds the worded questions super hard. She ended up finding the higher paper much more accessible as there's a lot less of that on there. It may be that it helps some kids that the higher level A Level questions are more abstract, eg solve this problem, rather than the train gets to euston at 11:43 after leaving Milton Keynes at 9:01 how long did it take etc etc

Roughly 1/3 of GCSE maths is directly algebraic, and up to another quarter might be indirectly algebraic. At A-level maths basically every question in pure maths relies on algebra.

So kind of weird for there to be someone good at algebra who does poorly at GCSE. The 15 or so people who you identified from the OP’s table are more likely people who for some other reason did poorly at GCSE maths (eg difficult family situation at that time) rather than them finally getting algebra at a-level.

I wonder if they are possibly candidates from a private arrangement eg online school. There's a school near us that allows them to do it with a 5 if they pass an algebra test on enrollment.

I think it would be unusual for a school to accept someone with a five, so I'd hazard a guess that a fair number of those who are allowed, are allowed because the school knows there were circumstances that meant they got a 5, but we're capable of getting much higher.

No no I get it completely. Why do you say that about algebra? Is there not a lot of algebra at GCSE?

I’m not the OP (whose views I will defer to) but you are talking about roughly 5% of fewer than 300 people, i.e 15 human beings. This is too few people for us to be able to draw statistically relevant conclusions. Remember also: the table doesn’t include those who dropped out along the way!

It is true that people who are good at algebra thrive at maths A-level, but it is very rare indeed for someone to be good at algebra and to have a 5 at GCSE maths.

6th forms do contextualise. Tons of the selective ones prioritise FSM, looked after or previously looked after, PP kids and kids local low attaining partner schools as a 1st priority after EHCPs. Look up the admissions criteria for Harris Westminster, LAET, Brampton Manor etc etc.
And honestly, I'm not sure what to say as to your London comment. London is not the whole of the country and London has plenty of schools like the ones I've described, 2 of our local ones are like this and my daughter briefly went to one. They just had a 28% pass rate at one and 40% at the other. It's a record year for the second- they've never had higher than 35% before outsife of COVID! Both regularly have gangs outside and huge problems with county lines. Just because it's not on your doorstep, doesn't mean it doesn't exist and tbh that's not my point. The point is, no one in the school you describe would get a contextual offer based on their school, because that's not a low attaining school! It's not just about the type.

However, unless the politicians are willing to fund summer schools and tutoring catch up during Sixth Forms for kids who got a 5 or 6 in Maths because of their circumstances, so that they can then access Maths A level and higher paid careers and STEM, none of these discussions are relevant. It is just a waste of time.

@Foxesandsquirrels - we do not have schools like that in London. The local school near me that people “shun” has a combined GCSE English and Maths pass rate of 68%, individually more like 77% English and 73% Maths. Every single child who ends up there from a good home then has the chance to change at Sixth Form anyway to all of the selective Sixth Forms all over London. The main issue we are now experiencing is people tutoring for GCSE because Sixth Forms are so selective. And tutoring costs a lot of money. It is the Sixth Forms that should be doing the contextualising. Far too late by university level.

@noblegiraffe I was just looking at your table. It's interesting that the % getting A and A star from a grade 5 is actually quite high compared to grade 6 and 7. Do you think that's because some kids will struggle with the GCSE maths content but thrive in something like algebra which A Levels have a lot of? Or they find less subjects easier than a whole GCSE load? I'm curious. Couldn't imagine a grade 5 kid getting an A or A. I know it's a tiny % but it's quite high still.

Yup exactly. My DDs friend got a 7 in maths last year and has just got an E in her end of Y12 mock 😬

Well then your result does not contradict the advice in the OP then! It is consistent with it!

Yeah 1998. My school was shit, refused to let anyone enter for the higher tier paper 🙄

Honestly I'm not sure what your point is. I don't think you quite imagine the type of school I'm talking about when I say trauma from school. It's certainly not a school any middle class child would end up in. There's kids without a teacher for their full GCSE course, without heating, with leaky roofs, with gangs and daily violence being the norm. 20% pass rates. These are not rare. And to achieve a string of grade 9s in that setting is incredible and not on par to achieving it at a grammar.
Your school has to be very very low attaining across the board to get a contextual offer. Most contextual offers are based on personal circumstances. And it is no secret that life chances are decided in utero, however school is the number 1 thing that can go someway into levelling chances of success. Grammar school places used to be called golden tickets for a reason. There's a reason people pay thousands a year in stamp duty to move into the right catchment. If it didn't make an huge difference, people wouldn't do it.

That's what I said at the end of my last message. You can get contextual offers even from a grammar of private. School is not the whole picture.