Maths GCSE in Primary

[winterisstillcoming]

Hey everybody, I was wondering if you could help clear something up for me.

I was speaking to my SIL yesterday who told me her Y5 son is revising for his maths GCSE. He is at independent school. I said be careful only the first attempt counts. As a trustee of an Academy trust that has recently decided not to put students forward early for this reason, I thought I knew what I was talking about. Apparently not according to my SIL.

So was she correct, and is it an independent school thing that students are allowed to resit? Which puts my Trust's students at a disadvantage??

She was so bloody patronising too. And she got my nephews GCSE text books out at a family wedding.

Why is she taking 4 years to sit a 2 year course?,.
Because the school decided that would be best and also she is doing many other subjects.. So long as she is happy, doing new things in maths, I do not think it matters that she is going slowly through A level. It is preferable to going slowly through GCSE. She will have done 11 other GCSEs by the end of year 11, so I am happy she is getting a broad education up until 16, rather than just specialising in 3 or 4 A levels until then.

Because the school decided that would be best

The best solution to the problem caused by your DD being massively accelerated in primary is to massively slow down her progress in secondary. Other people wouldn’t be happy with that!

It’s also possible that a solution would have been to let your DD concentrate on other subjects in primary, and do new things in maths that were not GCSE.

Noble, because if someone has reached a 9, could they have done better? Has that student fulfilled their own potential?

How does it benefit the child to take exams early?

And why do we only ever have these discussions about maths?

because if someone has reached a 9, could they have done better?

You only needed 79% to get a 9 so there were kids getting 9s who still lost 1 in 5 marks on their GCSE paper. Would you have had them sit early, miss out on a 9 then make a poor start to A-level?
You could, of course, enter them in for further maths GCSE alongside GCSE maths, with the chance to get an A^, which is, IME, harder to get than a 9.

BertrandRussell so they can progress on to the next level surely. What other subjects would you like to discuss?

RubiaPTA - BertrandRussell so they can progress on to the next level surely.

Why would you need to pass a test to progress?

So you don't have to go back on yourself

I don't know much about maths-but I would have thought there must be much more interesting maths than exam maths? That's certainly the case in all the subjects I do know anything about.

So you don't have to go back on yourself

Why would you need to go back on yourself?

One of mine could probably have had a decent stab at English GCSE in year 7. Nobody ever suggested that they did, though, thankfully.

@noblegiraffe "We’ve talked on the other thread about acceleration as a general policy for large groups of students and how it damages some students chances of getting the highest grade that they are capable of. This anecdote is one example of that, and an issue that you continually ignore."

I have not ignored it. I have made clear that research supports moderate acceleration for the top 2% of the ability range (i.e. the exceptionally able as defined by DCSF in 2008) - not every G&T pupil as the term is generally used in the UK, and not the whole of a top set unless the school has a selective intake). Research also supports radical acceleration for the highly gifted (top 0.1%).

You, on the other hand, have continued to heap scorn on all forms and cases of acceleration, not just large groups of students, but even in cases like @JustRichmal's where the child clearly is exceptionally able and obtains the top grade, continues immediately to higher study, and the child and parent are both happy with the outcome.

What is conspicuously absent from your posts is a shred of actual evidence to support your position. By evidence I mean peer-reviewed empirical research with statistics establishing statistical significance. like these.
However, as your post above shows, you give more weight to an anecdote than a peer-reviewed study.

Has it actually occurred to you that those statistical methods you teach are not just for getting marks in exams but can actually be used to determine objective facts about the real world when limited subjective experience is liable to lead (and indeed has led) you into error, or do you still think that educational research is "bollocks"?

@BertrandRussell "How does it benefit the child to take exams early?"

The exams are incidental. What's important is the provision of an accelerated curriculum in which the pace and complexity is matched to the prior attainment and developmental readiness of the learner. The advantages are that:
accelerated students tend to outperform students who are not accelerated in their performance on standardized achievement tests, college grades, degrees obtained, status of universities or colleges attended, and career status. Accelerants equal or surpass non-accelerants in self-concept, self-esteem, self-confidence, social relationships, participation in extracurricular activities, and life satisfaction.

Your evidence is not from England, gfrnn I have zero problem with able pupils being provided content outside of the school curriculum, being given harder work than their classmates etc etc. Very happy with extension in the form of FSMQ, further maths, use of UKMT mentoring.The problem is that the UK school system is not set up for kids to sit exams early. Universities don’t like it when kids haven’t sat maths exams in Y13. They don’t like kids being taught university courses before they start uni.

So you can wang on about evidence from the US all you like, but in England, in the state system, a kid who sits their GCSE exam early is going to come up against exactly the problem that JustRichmal’s DD has faced: slower progress through A-level in order to stretch out secondary content, or the risk of running out of secondary maths prematurely and this causing issues with university access.

How very depressing then that people seem to be fighting for the curriculum and exams rather than exciting extension work.

And it really is only ever maths. I have a theory about that which will make people very cross with me, so I need a glass of wine first......

The standard answer, Bertrand is that GCSE maths doesn’t require maturity to fully appreciate it, unlike other subjects.

The evidence is not just from the US - it's from: Australia, China, Taiwan, Poland, Germany, Netherlands. I could go on. Guess what - they all found just the same thing that the US studies did. There has been 100 years of research on acceleration : hundreds of studies in many countries.
Are you seriously suggesting that England is a miraculous exception?
If so, you might want to read:

1. Recognising and supporting able children in primary schools, H Lee-Corbin
2. The North Warwickshire project : an approach in identifying and providing for children of high ability P J. Congdon. Both English studies. Both favourable towards acceleration.

As far as I have seen, the main problem facing gifted kids in the UK is the large fraction of teachers who are ignorant of research and best practice, who feel threatened by acceleration, and who prefer to either deny the gifted kids under their noses exist or to pretend that their needs can be met by the standard curriculum in the regular classroom because to make a bona fide effort to provide them with a curriculum which really meets their needs would just be too much of a pain in the arse.

pretend that their needs can be met by the standard curriculum

Who are you talking about? Surely this is not supposed to be a reference to me, who has talked constantly about going outside the standard curriculum?

I was put up a year at school by the way. I’m hardly the sort to pretend that gifted children don’t exist or feel threatened by acceleration

The one exception to early entry is bilingual pupils taking GCSEs in their home languages - a bright child who is completely fluent in Portuguese or whatever can readily get a top grade at age 14. Unlike maths they’re highly unlikely to continue study of that language to A level and beyond, and since they’re not studying it at school anyway there are no further curriculum problems.

This article from 2012 shows why the rules were changed: there was some pretty appalling practice by some schools who in some cases couldn’t care less if they risked bright pupils’ chances at A level or university as long as their own league tables looked ok.
www.theguardian.com/education/2012/may/21/early-gcse-damage-children-ofsted

"pretend that their needs can be met by the standard curriculum"
I don't think that. Which is why I think the fixation on early exams is bonkers.

He might not be taking it early, often the top sets do GCSE work but it doesn't mean that they will do the exam early - it's a way of pushing the more able in my DCs experience...sorry, had to get that stealth boast in there

Sounds pointless. My son did the foundation maths paper under test conditions in year 6. No revision etc, just as something to do. There’s no need to actually sit the GCSE in primary school- why not wait until you’ve got your best chance, at 16?

DS is at a selective school. The don’t allow the GCSE to be taken until year 11, not because the children aren’t ready but because there is no benefit to the children taking it early. They teach around the curriculum and into the a level syllabus so the children are stretched, which seems a sensible way of doing things.

Gfrnn - I think your comprehension skills must be lacking. Noble has NEVER been against extra learning for advanced pupils. She is merely against sticking rigidly to an exam curriculum and putting kids in for public exams ridiculously early. I think you agree with that too don't you?