Is it usual to need a grade A GCSE to do A level maths now?

[Jella2u]

Disappointment here too. Son has got 10 GCSE's grade A-C. So what's the prob? You have no prob! Yes I do!!!
He got a grade B, yes that's right, B for Bertie for Maths. The school (which is a comprehensive turned Academy ) will let him do his Physics, Chemistry and Biology, but not Maths for which they say a Grade A is required unless you've clocked up a total of 224 points between the last 2 module papers. Unfortunately his tally was 205. Husband went up suited and booted to the school this morning to plead son's case. Phoned us this afternoon - no go. Have said this to all who got a B. So nothing personal there.
Have tried to contact other schools this afternoon. Needless to say all are shut. Local Authority very helpful and recommended emailing. Are schools running a clearing system that I don't know about? Do tell.
School did offer Statistics as a replacement this morning, but by this afternoon that was off the menu as no-one wants to do it. There are 7 pupils in this maths grade B situation who want to do A level Maths. Strangely the school says Chemistry, Physics, Biology and Maths are the most difficult subjects. So they might be for most people, but what if your child is the one that has had to struggle with French, Music, English Language and bid their time to do the supposed hard four?
We feel he needs A level maths to support science subjects.
Unfortunately, I said we would be back with an answer as to taking up a place with some sort of substitute for Maths before term starts. Every chance if I can't get something sorted fast he will be a well educated NEET!!!
All ideas welcome. Thanks in advance.

Have I read it right that the DS in question only did core and additional science and therefore hasn't done the third papers for any of his sciences either? Presumably he is going to be playing catch up in these subjects too then and is in for a very tough year?

My DSs at two separate schools were told that it was possible to do science a levels without three separate sciences but heavily encouraged to choose all three if they thought they would be wanting to do the A levels.

Glaurung.

Thank you so much for Edexcel marks info.

So he scored 70% for the hardest paper.
76% for paper 2.
78% for the easiest paper (they have rounded up the total score of up the 300 score by 1.
Not so rubbish as some might have thought particularly as I read in the newspaper of Edexcel saying to the Government they were going to stiffen up the maths paper.
Quite pleased actually. Shame the results aren't represented in percentages.

Anyway all academic now the book C1 Edexcel AS and A level Modular Maths has arrived. (So Amazon do deliver on a bank holiday!) Start tomorrow.
On opening book there is nothing to frighten the women, horses or students except the graph sketching if you have a shaky hand. Husband and I both mystified.

Look, look again. There must be a reason why not only the B students, but the A and A* ones are chucking the maths books under the bed and all these dreadful scores abound.

An earlier posting spoke of the language of mathematics and there may be something in this. In fact with this book it can only be that. There is a list of symbols and notation at the back. I remember son's quizzical face on the mention of lambda and theta while working through the physics data sheet. The same face people have the first time they come across the mysterious "x" and "nth".

Would like people's thoughts on this.

circular my school does Edexcel GCSE maths and OCR A-level without any issues so your DD should be fine with that. Afraid I don't know anything about physics!

secret you're welcome! It's good for me as a teacher to know the sorts of questions parents have and what they are thinking too! Obviously I think your school isn't taking the best course with doing stats in Y11 and having a year without algebra, so your DD doing some study outside of school is an excellent idea. The school might have some useful textbooks that they would lend your DD for this? My school has some that look like they're from the 50s and are a really solid course in algebra.

I just found this series of videos on the web for bridging the gap from GCSE to A-level. I haven't watched them but they look like they could be useful. www.m4ths.com/gcse-to-a-level-bridge.html

jella UMS points don't exactly map to percentage scored on the paper. By my reckoning he got about 66% on module 3, 53marks out of 80 gives a UMS of 112. Grade boundaries for UMS always stay the same, the number of raw marks on a paper you need to earn those UMS points changes depending on how difficult the paper was. That's why giving a percentage isn't very helpful as one year a certain percentage will get you a B, the next only a C.

Of course your DH and you don't think C1 is difficult, you both have maths heavy degrees! You might feel differently if you only had a maths GCSE.
It's not so much the language that foxes them, (although that comes into it) it's the algebra manipulation. Completing the square in particular, especially where fractions are involved really gets them. Plenty of stages in which to make a silly mistake.

Neither you nor your DH will be the ones having to sit the exam. It's your DS.

Does he actually want to be an engineer or to take on so much work? You haven't answered this question yet.

Jella, those percentages are the ones that have been adjusted for the difficulty of the paper. With UMS 80% is an A (always) and 70% is a B (always). The actual raw percentage achieved on the paper itself may be higher lower or the same as this, supposedly according to the difficulty of the paper. On this syllabus the actual percentage needed for an A is usually a bit less than 80%, although on the linear syllabus it is usually much less, meaning that many teacher believe it is easier to get higher grades on the linear syllabus, probably because many schools switch children who are on paper (KS2 SAT results) the same ability but who have performed poorly on the early modules to the linear syllabus.

Not sure this tells you anything useful, but it does seem that not all GCSE maths syllabuses are equal, though they may well all be equally poor preparation for A level.

x-posts with noble

OP on one hand it's great that you are willing to support your son but only if its what he really wants to, parental pressures aside.

But it comes across as if you and your DH are steamrolling him into this and perhaps setting him up for disappointment. I do think that there is such a thing as a maths ceiling for a person (mine was a-level further maths and despite working my ass off for it only scraped a C).

As asked before, which unis were you thinking of? Surely that will give you an indication as to the feasibility of home tutoring.

So does that mean he just scraped a B in one paper, is a solid B in the other 2 but no A papers at all?

It does still seem as if you are looking at the A level as being easy from your perspective (ie someone good at maths) and not from the perspective of your son. What is it he wants to do?

Son was really disappointed to realise that he had failed to meet the entry requirement to A Level Maths with a B, because he knows this is going to make the physics a whole load more difficult.

He's happy to be starting the maths tomorrow, before his gym session. I think we'll tackle the maths like the gym - every day with one days rest a week. Son's chin will be up when he sees just how do-able it is.

Surprised at how "doors closed" rather than "doors open" people are. Sadly they must have limited their lives, by not meeting challenges. We are all in Britain going to have to do things we never thought we'd have to or be able to, from fighting with mending the double flush button on the toilet to being shown how to insert a catherter and given a video just in case we haven't got it! (That wasn't me that was expected to do that, but an elderly lady aiding her Husband). Faced with that learning challenge loads of people would pick up the A Level maths text book!!!

If we fail to meet the challenge in reaching exam standard at least he will have had two years maths the system would have denied him and tackled the essential algebra and Calculus. Nothing lost and in fact in a better position than those that had achieved GCSE A and A* and achieved low grades at A Level Maths grade or worse still U's.

I will keep coming back to the site for all the tips that have been given, but must get my head down to planning the work to be done and getting on with it.

Thank you to all for your advice and company on this decision making journey. In particular thank you to Mumsnet without which our family would probably be still be as depressed this Monday night as we were last Friday afternoon.

Jella.

I agree with you that perseverence is key to academic success and indeed to success in career terms later on.

You do seem very determined that your son should be an engineer - for which my understanding is that you have to be pretty hot at maths - whether you are a mechanical engineer, an electronics engineer, a chemical engineer or even a civil engineer.

So I ask again. Does your son share this ambition?

And the unspoken question that has been something of an elephant in the room on this thread. Does your son really have the ability to do (or do well) at A level maths?

You still sound like you're trying to blame schools and other people for being "doors closed" because they are saying that someone who is currently only at a B is not suited to an A-level course.

Schools and teachers are not just trying to protect league tables and ofsted ratings, but are trying to prevent someone from failing a course and needing to re-do it, switch in Yr 13, change plans at a later date, etc. They only want to be realistic. Nobody is saying that with a lot of hard work, a B-level candidate couldn't eventually learn what is needed, only that at the moment, a B-level student is not ready to go straight into an A-level class and expect to do well. And the schools don't have the resources to give the individual tuition needed to cover all the material that he has not grasped from GCSE yet, alongside the very difficult A-level stuff, particularly at a pace that would suit someone who didn't find GCSE easy. That's not being 'doors closed', it's being realistic about what can be offered with the time and resources available.

Lots of people have suggested that B-student can be good candidates for A-level if the reason they got the B was not to do with their understanding of the work. Others have suggested that even if there are understanding gaps, there are ways to bridge these and demonstrate that to the school (either by doing other courses in the interim and A-level later, or demonstrating that the weak areas have been covered by redoing GCSE or doing bridging papers/book, etc). By all means, determination and hard work are vital, and with personal tuition, that may be exactly what is needed in this case.

But it isn't a case of schools somehow willfully refusing to teach someone by rigidly sticking to pointless rules. They are being realistic about what they can offer in their courses.

If you take an apprenticeship route to engineering rather than A levels then you would typically do a BTEC L3 in engineering & then perhaps an HNC/HND and then maybe go on to complete a degree. The entry requirement is GCSE B in maths. How does this work then? As far as I can see the BTEC has two maths modules which cover a lot of A level topics (even f. maths topics in places) and some fairly mathematical mechanics/physics modules too. There are no examinations, but the work is assessed somehow (not quite sure how). Why should the entry standard for the BTEC be lower than for A level if they are both routes to a degree, or is the BTEC better at bridging the gap somehow? Also why if the BTEC covers these maths topics and some people go on to degrees from it without having maths A level do other engineering degree courses require A level maths as well as the BTEC?

Can you answer these questions:

Were you surprised that he got a B, given all the support you'd given him?
Does he want to be an engineer?
Do you think he is a talented mathematician?

In fairness to OP I think her answers to the last 3 questions have been consistently 'yes'.

It all sound like some sort of military regime. Chin up, daily maths after daily gym sessions, rest one day a week.

Is this real

Thanks for the info about grades. I am a little shocked, tbh.

Jella, in your shoes, I'd be looking at your son thinking about alternative career paths based on what everyone has posted. I got an A at O Level Maths many years ago and a B at A Level and then I went on to study Chemistry, which I would assume to have a similar maths component to Engineering. I found it almost impossible and gave up the course after a year. The differentiation that we were expected to grasp immediately was just so hard and I know I could have understood it if I'd really tried but the trying was more than I wanted to give to it. I later went on to do a degree in an arts subject and got an extremely good result. I think, had I wanted to and loved it enough, I could have done the maths for the Chemistry but I just couldn't put that much into it. I'm far better at Maths than most people and particularly good at algebra but it wasn't enough to make me able to grasp some of the very abstract and complicated reasoning that was required. I hope your son ends up happy but in your shoes I would not be encouraging him to continue with this career path. If a B is a bit above average, it's probably enough for him to get an A Level with some help. It's not enough for him to make a proper go of a degree in a maths-heavy subject. The jump between A Level and degree was massive twenty years ago. From what others have posted I think it might be bigger now.

I have to say that for someone who got a high level 4 in KS2, to get a mid-level B at GCSE is slightly better than the 'expected' progress. It doesn't really sound like the school failed him, as the OP seems to think.

My DD1 got an A in maths iGCSE but knew she was no mathematician. If you only have a B, you are definitely not a Mathematician. Many young people I know have maths and further maths at A and A at A level. they understand maths but interestingly found languages really hard. DD 2 has a B at iGCSE maths and would never have succeeded at A level. If he has no As at GCSE look at what his best results are and look at what his career choices might be. Look at suitable University courses, or apprenticeship requirements, and do the A levels recommended. 3 sciences are rarely needed but if he has as A in another GCSE, this could be a subject worth taking. You need to do some careers homework before deciding what to do.

The level thing is another thing that makes me feel a bit shocked. We are led to believe (those of us with children at infant or junior school) that Level 4 at the end of that is perfectly OK. And it may be OK but it's clearly not on track for an actual good result at GCSE stage.

I sympathise, though would have been delighted with a 'B' myself bit.ly/1digmMu

There seems to be some confusion about Engineering degrees. The top degrees for Engineering are now 4 year MEng degrees. These enable you to go straight onto post grad training to become a Chartered Engineer. The BEng courses (3 years) do not allow this. As far as I am aware the Russell Group universities offering MEng will want maths and physics and probably further maths at grade A at A level. The lesser courses BEng may consider BTEC qualifications but I doubt this is good enough for MEng. Anyone applying for Engineering must know that there are now two levels of degree. The BEng is distinctly the poorer option and has lesser career prospects.

But a 'B' is a perfectly good result, and good for many courses.

A Level 4 is the standard that they'd like to get year 6s to. It's a reasonable level. It predicts reasonable GCSEs. It's just that people with reasonable GCSEs aren't the ones who want to go into higher-level, advanced maths courses/degrees.

I think there should be more opportunities for maths to be studied beyond GCSE level, in other forms than A-level. I'd like to encourage as many of my students as possible to carry on with maths. I think it's great, and I'd love more people to be really good at it and love it too. But I still wouldn't suggest that A-level is the right path for most of them, much as I wish it could be. They need other paths.

There is also a lot that I think could be done with the curriculum in earlier years, which would perhaps get a higher level of numeracy by GCSE age in more students, potentially allowing more to go on to A-level, or if not A-level, to have enough maths for other science subjects. But that's a slightly different issue.

Perseverance and learning new skills is important but there's a difference between 'closed door thinking' and 'realism'. The more I run, the more I increase my speed and endurance but realistically however much I practice I'm not ever going to provide any sort of challenge for Usain Bolt.

Have you actually listened to any of the advice on this thread about going over the B, A, A* stuff from GCSE first or are you ploughing straight into the C1 book?

HarumScarum - the Government has just published research that shows children gaining lower level 4 at primary school do not get the top GCSE's. if children get a 4a, their chances are greatly improved. Good teaching at secondary school can make a huge difference but this is not the norm in many schools.