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?

If you are aiming for a 4 or 5 you take Foundation.
You only take Higher if you have a plausible chance of a 6, and not if you are at risk of not getting at least a 4.

Daughter's school last year. All average sets for Maths and below generally took Foundation. It's a risk going for Higher as if they don't get the band for the 4, and it's a hard paper, they fail completely. So schools hedge their bets and put them in for Foundation. Hence overall why there's a massive issue with getting these kids through GCSE Maths.

When I was in school (years ago!) the highest mark I could have been given for my GCSE maths was a D, due to paper I sat, that was the highest achievable grade.
It was my only grade that was below a c, the rest were all A’s and B’s. I just didn’t ‘get’ the more complicated maths and would panic, teachers seem to only have one way of teaching it and if you didn’t understand that way, then you were left behind.
I had to do Maths again at college, but not a gcse paper, it was a functional skills course and I passed it.
Roll on 20 odd years and at a parents evening one of the teachers said that our eldest was so far behind in Maths he would never catch up….. I felt so awful for him, that I had somehow passed on my own weakness.
We paid for a tutor to help him and once he had someone working with him to give him strategies and confidence he soon caught up, now he is at secondary school and in the top half of his class.
Some people do struggle, I know I did, if I had had to keep retaking it I would have bawled my eyes out.

ETA mis read your post and took it completely the wrong way.

Sorry!

I am so old that it was O levels when I was 16 and my maths was so bad that I was not allowed to sit it. I just could not understand any of it apart from arithmetic and I was very quick at that and could do much of it in my head. I did take and pass the old City and Guilds arithmetic. Anyway, less of me, out of curiosity I have just googled some sample GCSE maths questions and even after all these years I felt echos of sick panic as I read them. I could do the arithmetic ones but the others might as well have been written in Japanese for all the sense it made. Yet I achieved good A levels a degree and post grad qualifications so I guess I am not unintelligent. There must be so many kids out there with different sorts of intelligence and skill sets.

I understand not everyone can get the top grades. But apart from something very serious affecting mental/physical health like why do people find the basics that difficult?

If you know you only need a pass, you take the Foundation because you've got more chance of getting a 4 or 5 with easier questions.

Spot the parent who wouldn’t onow dyscalculia if it bit them on the arse.

Because some people struggle
You don't sound very bright yourself if you can't understand that.

I got a D in maths. I look at a page of sums and they just swim in front of me. I got A* in English and Art. Is it seriously that difficult to understand that some people are better at some subjects – i.e. creative ones – and others are better at maths and science?

PS> I ending up having a hugely successful career in the arts, top of my field. So, literally, go figure.

Are you aware that even on the Foundation paper there is algebra, trig, standard form, vectors?
Including in the trig having to know exact values for things like cos60? They aren't really 'basics'.

And have you seen the number of adults on MN who don't know order of operations and can't work out their pay rises when given a % raise?

If you don't have a 'feel' for numbers then you have to learn a whole lot of stuff that to you doesn't have an obvious thread helping it all make sense.

Your son is clearly very bright. You sound a bit thick though in all honesty if you have no idea at all why others might struggle to get a 4.

They should replace the "grade 4 GCSE English and Maths" requirement with a a numeracy and literacy exam, with a fixed pass mark... nothing to do with how well everyone else does. Can be taken in Yr7 for the extremely able, or still be taken by struggling 18yos if necessary.

The English and GCSEs for those whove passed that already.

I think this was her point - what about the kids who are never going to get a grade 4? OP is thinking it’s cruel and pointless to make them keep on resitting.

They aren't that basic?

My son isn't even doing gcse, he does functional skills and it's not just adding and subtracting.

I DID bawl my eyes out. It was 1993, and I failed the resit at college. They told me I had to do it again. I broke down at that point.

Reading some of the comments here reminds me of the young me, excelled at English, couldn't do maths, was treated like a thicko.

My heart breaks for kids going through this now, because the reality is it's a LOT harder to get by without it now.

I'm 50 and have thought about taking it again on and off throughout my adult life, but just can't face going through all that again.

Even though I understand why, now, I never got rid of the idea that, despite my 2:1 degree, that failure of mine made me stupid.

It's not the lack of the qualification that held me back, it's the opinion of myself I was left with.

4 is the new C, if they don't get it it may limit their future academic and employment prospects, depending on what path they choose to pursue.

I wish there was a very basic adding ,subtracting ,multiplying etc,qualifications for kids li!e mine who struggle
In.My 51 years I have never had to use most of the maths I w as taught at school.,but use basic maths daily.

That's not true.

If you do a Higher paper, you need a low percentage because it's a harder paper with harder questions.

If you do a Foundation paper, you need about 50%

This is wrong. GCSE Maths is bloody hard and mostly irrelevant to daily life.

My daughter is about to retake maths for the 3rd time, her issue is that they keep moving the grade boundaries so she just misses out. Hers was the first year to have the covid allowances removed despite having her education disrupted she would have passed first time if those allowances had been in place.

Take a look at a foundation paper and you will see it covers a variety of topics:
https://qualifications.pearson.com/content/dam/pdf/GCSE/mathematics/2010/Exam-materials/1MA01Fque20170526.pdf

I never passed my maths GCSE im.51_
When I went to train as a nurse I needed five GCSE,s at grade c or above including maths or a science and English I was lucky to have have two.science GCSE,s so was accepted on that basis.

Me too. There are so few official ways for children to evidence what they can do, if they aren't GCSE type children.

This has been standard for years - if you didn’t get a C back in the day you had to redo it alongside whatever college course you were doing. This happened to my brother back in 2008, it’s not news. Once they reach 18 if working they can obviously do what they want but if in college they must do it - if there are significant learning needs then it is a functional skills qualification instead