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.

Breatheslowly.

You have a point. Son may grow to love the course. No-one here has ever taken Sociology. Then again son was the first person in the family to have ever taken and achieved music gcse and geography gcse.
The course has one really big plus - he will be required to write essays and hopefully make presentations to pull people over to his point of view. He would never have been required to do that with 3 sciences and maths. It's the sort of thing you pay silly money for on the MBA course. So yes, I hear what you say.

Football still carrying on (groan).

"There is no support we can give him with Sociology and Criminality other that watching reality programmes and every support we could have given him with maths."

Don't forget that it is essential at this stage that he develops independence and his own drive to research his subject. So perhaps having a subject that is all his own and not "in the family" is not a bad idea.

I understand why you need to coach him in maths because of the specific situation with poor teaching etc. But don't assume that this will be the same with all his A-levels and that you will (or should) be involved with everything he does. Ime (university lecturer) it is the ability to organise their own work that will make or break a student. So don't be tempted to take on too much.

What is coming across from all your posts is that you and your husband are running around doing a lot of the thinking and organising and phoning colleges and that your son is not doing it. But it would be valuable experience for him do some of this, to think and plan and organise, and not to assume he will be doing whatever his dad did.

If you carry on doing it all for him, he will be at a serious disadvantage compared to the thousands of 16yos who are currently out there negotiating with their colleges and getting themselves jobs and volunteering placements and other extra-curricular experience.

One comment for those looking at the percentage of students who got A or A. Also look at the percentage who got A to E, this is lower for Maths than for a lot of subjects.

What does that mean marco? - that a higher percentage of Maths A level students got below an E than students doing other subjects ? Blimey

Balloonslayer, yes. Which supports the view that if you are good at maths, it is easier to get an A* but if you are not good you are more likely to fail.

If you are good - properly good - at maths, it's a doddle to get A at GCSE and A level. Not very many people are properly good at it, though. About the same number are properly good at English or history. But it's much much harder to get A in those subjects. So which are the harder subjects? I'd suggest that the harder subjects are the ones where it's difficult to get top marks even if you are brilliant at them. We also see more and more kids who aren't great at maths and the sciences pushed into them, because they are deemed 'best' so it's not surprised that there are more people with poorer marks. Most of the people doing English and history at A level really want to do those subjects. So it's not surprising there are fewer outright fails.

I didn't have to expend any effort at all to get As in maths and further maths at A level before the dawn of time (the mid 80s). I had to work incredibly hard at history and music to get the same grades.

I think Russians is right. Certainly when I was studying economics at degree level there was a general acceptance that it was 'easier' to get a first on the maths based papers in that there was always a right answer. Whereas getting a first on an essay based paper depended at least in part not only on your ability but the views and outlook of the examiner. The colleges that were looking to stay high up the league table definitely pushed their students that direction.

I'm pretty sure the mark scheme at English A level when I took it was that each essay (answer) - you did 3 questions in 3 hours - was marked out of 20. 14 was an A. Sounds easy - but it really wasn't. It would be unheard of to get anywhere near to full marks on a question. (I got my A but the teachers wouldn't predict anybody an A - even if they consistently got high-ish marks for class/homework - because you just never knew what the examiners were looking for. As others have said, at least with maths, it's either right or wrong.)

"unfortunately resources get a bit thin on the ground when you get to Further maths"
noblegiraffe we have discovered this. DS is doing FM AQA and wants to self teach M3 and FP4. I can't find any AQA books. Have sent for the OCR ones which cover most of the topics. It's probably useful to practise papers from other exam boards anyway.

Thanks Noble, yes DS uses Kahn and Wolfram. He will get the answer in wolfram and try and work backwards if he is really struggling.
The furthermaths link looks good thank you

Maths having right answers can work both ways. I think it's easier to be adequate in English because you can read and remember and regurgitate to some extent, so a larger spread of ability takes it. But obviously not so many will get top grades. But it is harder to get anything at all right in Maths if you just don't get it so many of the contingent who are borderline will drop out before they get to exam stage or, more sensibly, just not take it at all. Personally, I found English much easier (late 80s). I got an A for Maths O Level and a B for A level and the other way round for English (Lit).

I remember a friend telling me ages ago that by far the highest proportion of A grades at A-level was in ancient Greek (which he had done), in order to illustrate how impossible it was to compare levels of difficulty of A-levels by the proportion of grades given. Very very few did it, pretty much entirely at independent schools, and a very self-selecting sample of people who had already done extremely well at Latin, as it was primarily offered to those as an additional extra. Anyone not good enough to get an A was probably never even likely to make it into the class. And yet nobody ever looked at the stats and said 'well if you want an easy A-level you ought to take ancient Greek, must be a doddle', even though they tried to make various false conclusions based on grade proportions for other subjects.

I suspect maths is somewhat similar - quite a selective group gets in to start with, and mostly those who are already very good at it. It's quite an all-or-nothing sort of subject, more so than other subjects, where there is that ability to know something about it, waffle, regurgitate a bit of what you remember, etc., and come out with some kind of middlish grade. If you don't get maths much, you probably won't get anywhere at all with most of the questions.

I agree. Not sure waffling would get me very far in a maths exam...

I do think this has been an interesting thread.

Ds has just finished year 7 near the top of his top set for maths, doing level 7 work. The teacher at parents evening told us that the entire set were at Gcse grade C level then. Sounded pretty standard top set stuff to me.

But I wouldn't call him a natural mathematician or a good candidate to study maths at A level, just 'normally' bright across the board. But then he is a bit of an all rounder, academically. I guess I might over state his ability at maths if he were weaker in English than he is, does that make sense?

Have nearly finished Chapter One Edexcel Book One with son - Core Maths.

The first hurdle will be factorising quadratics when a is not one and from the way the book is written it is expected that you've seen this before.
The way shown in the book is not the CGP way and would students be familiar with that anyway? From CGP GCSE Higher Revision book:
"Chances are, the Exam question will be a=1, so make sure you can do that type easily. Only then should you try to get to grips with these harder ones". Getting to grips will be a problem as there is typically one worked example and two questions per GCSE revision book.
If you stick with the CGP way, only when a becomes larger and has multiples will you need to stop and think.

Indices.
a to the power n divided by m is not well explained in the book and yet again the CGP way works well. We grimly remember it by RIP, but son thinks RIPT is better if you can think of a word to represent the T.

The book rarely has the necessary tips. e.g Whole number are never really whole numbers, but numbers over one (and especially one over one!!). This is really important when you come to the trickier negative index questions. It doesn't remind you that if you get a fraction over a fraction to just turn it into a horizontal form i.e. fraction divided by fraction and to do as you've always done (change the sign, flip second fraction).

When you get to questions asking for fourth root it doesn't remind you to use the shift button on your calculator.

Surds.
The skill of dividing through a fraction top and bottom by a whole number isn't shown and yet the questions are there.

There are a lot of missing lines in this book. An English Teacher will say that the point of English is to communicate, well so is maths. When the A and A* pupils are finding the course too tough the fault isn't with them, but the missing lines. This book should be a lot bigger with hints tips and different methods of tackling the same type of question. That would make it do-able by loads of people. Fling those doors open!

Your guinea pigs will be on to the Mechanics Book next.

I assume the Edexcel book isn't a self-study guide (unlike the CGP book). It's assumed the teacher will give the students tips - that's one of the reasons they're there!

daphnedill

My Husband is exactly of the same opinion as you, but clearly something has gone wrong.
So far the only people not to have posted saying they have problems with AS and A level maths are those with students that have taken GCSE Further Maths. Did they do the topics that are not emphasised in the usual GCSE?

I agree, the teacher is the one to give extra examples and hints and tips.

To be fair to the book, I think with your surds example, they are reasonable to assume that an a-level student knows how to simplify a fraction.

With factorising where a>1, is the method in the book the one where you multiply a by c, then find two factors which add together to give b? I love that method, but if a and c are large, finding the right factors of the product can be tricky as C1 is non-calculator. Most students don't even attempt to use it and factorise by inspection and trial and error instead. This is usually quite straightforward if a is prime, as it usually is.

What is RIP, by the way?

yes I'd agree that the examples about fractions and indices and so on are pretty standard for higher level GCSE, and I'd certainly expect pupils not to need those sorts of tips even when doing GCSE (I don't teach A level). The more tips/tricks/mnemonics etc someone needs, the more I worry that they haven't really understood something, because for most of the algebra/number type topics, if you get why things work, you just know how to do it because that's how it has to be, rather than needing to learn and remember specific methods. I teach methods and memory tricks and so on to the ones who want to do well on the exam but aren't getting it intuitively, but it's a different type of pupil who wants that.

(And don't get me started on those formula triangles they teach, so that pupils are confident that they know how to do various problems, but without any idea of how to rearrange equations or why they are doing the triangle or what happens if they remember it wrongly or forget which bit is times or divide! Again, useful as a memory trick for students who need to be able to do them to pass an exam; useful for students who do get it who want a shortcut; but awful when it's the only explanation they ever get, and then later on struggle because they don't know how to do algebra).

(sorry, a bit of a sidetrack)

Glad your son has to to fill in all the gaps of what he missed in GCSE; that's the sort of thing that he probably wouldn't be able to get without the one-to-one help.

It doesn't remind you that if you get a fraction over a fraction to just turn it into a horizontal form i.e. fraction divided by fraction and to do as you've always done (change the sign, flip second fraction).

I'm not being deliberately difficult, I promise. But as a student who was not naturally suited to Maths as a discipline and yet got a higher grade than your son at O Level before the whole grade inflation business, would this not be the natural thing to do if you understand what you are doing? I mean, if you're not getting this as a normal thing that makes sense, is Maths the thing that you should be studying? Maths at A Level is not about learning rules. It is about learning ways of thinking. If you haven't got the idea of how this works, learning rules of how to do it won't help in the long run. And it especially won't help once the Maths gets harder at degree level, which it really really does. Someone said upthread that Maths at A Level turns into a different subject and I agree with that. I'd also say that Physics and Chemistry at degree level turn into subjects which suddenly need far more higher level Maths to do properly. I would imagine that Engineering which is largely Physics-based would be much the same.

If you haven't internalised the idea of dividing a fraction by a fraction at this stage to the extent that it's a normal and natural thing to do, degree level Maths in a science based course is going to be absolutely horrible for you.

I also think this has been an interesting thread. I have a daughter who is still only at Primary school and have been interested to see how her teachers have picked up on her better than average number skills and are constantly telling me how she will be good at Maths. That may or not be the case but I'm slightly rolly eyed at the idea that number skills are the same as Maths. I don't think this is the case.

noblegiraffe

I'm not entirely in agreement with my Husband.
No harm in giving hints and tips in a book.
No harm in showing different methods for the very same question.
As a professional maths teacher you will be familiar with all methods and have the flexibility to deal with the different learning styles.

As for a better book: Who knows what will happen in the future - the student/teacher laid up sick at home. At least there would be a decent book to fall back on.

Was this thin book driven by cost?
Better to have a more expensive book that succeeds with most students than a thin one that doesn't meet student needs.
Anyway a thicker book will make it harder to fling under the bed !!

Assuming students remember everything after at least a six week break will be a dangerous game next week - good luck! This may be a part of why A and A* students have been failing.

RIP - Root of Index then Power.
RIPT suggestions welcome, or better it. RIP too grim.

Learning rules is the wrong way to try to understand Maths.

Jella2u - neither of my sons did a GCSE further maths, but also neither had problems at AS or A2 maths.

Perhaps it would be more helpful to get the GCSE guide and start there with your DS. That way you can over any areas he hasn't fully understood.

I think if you are studying yourself, one textbook isn't enough. If I wanted to master a new topic before teaching it, I'd look at various sources.

Have you got the blue book? We use the black book, but for OCR (same authors) and it's pretty good. Have you also got a password for mymaths? That should give you the variety of approaches you are hoping for.

I think the remembering things is the key to someone being a good mathematician. During GCSE and A level DD2 remembered nearly all the topics she'd been taught as she understood them and how they fitted together. When she started the A level course some of her classmates constantly protested that they had never been taught topics that were being revisited - if you don't remember the work from GCSE then its a much harder job to build on that knowledge.

DD1 got an A at GCSE and she was certainly a "forgetter" and seemed to have to constantly relearn maths topics every time she took an exam. She definitely would have found A level maths difficult.

I agree with learning rules being problematic. RIP for example isn't a rule, you could actually work out the power first, then the root. It's just usually easier to work out the root first, but that should be obvious from the question. Trying to make that into something to remember is actually making it harder.