To have not known kids have to attain grade 4 in maths?

[Pepperpotladles]

I did not know this!
I have obviously been living under a rock.
So today someone told me that if kids get grades 1, 2 or 3 in their maths GCSE, it is compulsory that all these kids have to keep on studying GCSE maths until they achieve a grade 4 or above, and they have to keep trying to achieve this up until their 25th birthday.
Is this true?!?
I can't believe my ears.
What about kids who simply can't achieve grade 4 or above in maths, for any number of reasons?

@Ghsvdf if your maths is as poor as your comprehension and critical thinking skills, I suspect you would fail to achieve a grade 4. I don't understand how you can't understand that different DC have different abilities. Good for you for having a studious, intelligent child. In spite of you, rather than because of you I imagine.

If she’s doing an apprenticeship, she won’t even have to do that. Also, she could just not turn up to the lessons/exams. No one’s going to physically force her.

Now this may blow your mind but not every body has a STEM career
And most people will not be an economist like your son
I hope your son isn't as narrow minded as you and able to.think outside of his little bubble.

Most apprenticeship, require a person To have at least grade fours in Maths and English or eqivalent.

I agree.

English Functional Skills is very good at including useful stuff and excluding the less needed.

But more and more jobs need basic Maths skills. Normal life is more complicated these days with internet banking, apps, pensions, insurances, utility contracts, etc., so again, even people not needing Maths in the workplace will need basic Maths skills just to navigate normal life. It really is an essential life skill - even just to work out which option is better on supermarket shelves when comparing different sized items or comparing products on BOGOF or 3 for 2 offers against other cheaper items sold singly.

Fair enough, unless you work in STEM you probably don't need to know the equation for the volume of a sphere, but you still need basic numeracy skills such as fractions, percentages, areas of basic shapes, etc. Tradesmen need to know how many bags of cement to buy to lay a patio, how many tiles for a kitchen floor, how many rolls of wallpaper for a lounge, etc. All that is basic numeracy. Chefs need to know the costings of the meals they cook and how to scale up/down recipes for bigger/smaller portions etc. Self employed people (even window cleaners, gardeners etc) need adequate numeracy to deal with tax returns, invoicing, etc.

I'm not saying that the current GCSE Maths is suitable for "life" numeracy - it's deficient in lots of ways, but a lot of it IS applicable to "normal" people for their "normal" lives. Personally, I'd rather see a "numeracy" exam taken, something akin to the 11+ Maths paper which really does test basic numeracy skills, to concentrate on the basics. With the Maths GCSE only offered to more able students who can actually access the syllabus. I think the foundation GCSE Maths paper is an attempt to do that, but it's still "too heavy" on more complicated Maths, and some schools have "middle" streams/sets where part of the class are doing foundation and others doing the "full" syllabus which is crazy and won't help the lower level students at all! To my mind, we need two completely separate subjects at school, one called "numeracy" and another called "maths" - one being life maths skills and other aimed at STEM.

Did OP mention having kids in the first post?

Agreed everyone needs basic maths ,most peop!e don't need most of the maths taught on the GCSE .

Which is why I suggested using the 11+ as the "life skill" benchmark instead for struggling pupils.

So what skills would people deems as essential?

I can think of...
Money
Shopping (budgeting etc)
Calculator use
Time
Understanding time tables
Bank statements
Loans & Mortgages
Tax
Basic calculations

Is English functional skills seen as the same level as GCSE by colleges and universities for the heavily stem leaning child

Don't know about university.

Once DD had passed L2 FS English independently she was allowed by college to drop the GCSE resit.

Not true. Functional skills doesn't cover the breadth of curriculum

45/80 ish on 3 x foundation papers is usually grade 4

Have you tried a paper? Quite a challenge for many learners

Functional skills is harder if children struggle with reading.

Entry level maths are step down from gcse. Much more accessible. Ask school about them.

That is my concern. She gets a reader, but the wordiness may be too much. We won't know until we try post GCSE.

Entry level will give some success. I've taught it.

https://qualifications.pearson.com/en/qualifications/edexcel-entry-level-certificate/mathematics-2017.html

@monkeysox I can see the point of Entry Level for someone below GCSE grade 3 (or 2), but can't see the point for someone who has a 3 and is trying to get that illusive Level 2 pass. Am I missing something?

No not missing anything that's exactly what it's for.

I would just say, that colleges (and posibly apprenticeships) have to comply with their Condition of Funding. Sometimes there isn't flexibility.

My son who struggles with English exams (and was optimistically awarded a grade 3 during Covid), had a year off after dropping out of sixth form. During that year he did a Functional Skills English course and passed Level 2.

The following year he started a BTEC at college but due to his grade 3 he had to continue studying English GCSE. He didn't attend classes at first (thinking his FS covered it) but was told he would be thrown off his course if he didn't turn up to English GCSE classes and exams. PP is right, it was more mentally stressful than his main course. Only saved by having a really great English resit teacher.

That was my ds. He got level 9s in English, history, German, level 8s in science, computing.

Level fucking 2 in maths. He struggled with it from day dot. I remember struggling with him to get the concept of number bonds to ten when he was 5.

He wanted to do English, history and politics A level but becuase he didn’t get a 4 or above in maths, they wouldn’t let him. He had to do a Btec. He wanted to stay at his school so they put him on the business one - which included a lot of maths. That made no sense.

He had to take the level 4 along side it, and got a 4 the next year. He wasn’t allowed to retake along side a levels.

Oh, and I got an E in maths back in the day, in 1996. No one cared much then, I still got into college for A levels and could have gone to uni (other friends who did badly in maths gcse did).

I didn’t end up doing A levels I went straight into work. As an accounts assistant, doing maths stuff all day 🤣 I picked up sage and them excel really quickly, the maths gcse didn’t hinder me one bit.