Has anyone's DC done A-level 'Systems and Control Technology'?

[ErrolTheDragon]

Sixth form open evening and A-level choices suddenly looming large on the horizon! So, my DC wants to go into some sort of engineering at a good university - probably electronics (favourite GCSE)/elec. eng and so will definitely do Maths and Physics but not sure about the other two choices. Further maths, chemistry or biology maybe. And then there's the 'Systems and Control Technology' - what we're a bit puzzled by is why the school offers this but not Electronics at A-level, which would have seemed like the obvious choice. So I was wondering if anyone here had a DC who is doing it or has done it and how they'd rate it. I see that while the former is listed by AQA under Design and Technology, the Electronics comes under Science - so presumably there's a different emphasis.

The other possibility would be Computing, which they'll be doing for the first time next year (they started the Comp. Sci GCSE a couple of years back).

I realise this is completely unhelpful, but I took one of the first incarnations of this subject at O level in the 80s, and it was my absolute favourite subject at school ever :)

Systems and control technology would be useful in engineering. DH is a senior engineer and has just gone back and done a masters in Systems process engineering. Then again, he is a Control & Instrumentation engineer.

Thanks. I guess one of my concerns is that I don't think I've seen it mentioned as a desirable subject in any of the university entry requirements I've looked at (whereas Electronics is). The other issue might be the course work load relative to the science A-levels.

"So, my DC wants to go into some sort of engineering at a good university - probably electronics"

At schools which don't regard Further Maths as a complete option, the strongest candidates for engineering courses will take at A2:

Maths, Further Maths, Physics, Chemistry

or

Maths, Further Maths, Physics, an MFL.

Those will get you on to any engineering course in any discipline at any university.

If your schools regards Further Maths as a complete option, as some do, then you should take:

Maths, Further Maths, Physics

which again will get you on to any engineering course in the country.

If Further Maths is available at your school and you don't take it, some universities will reject your application pretty much out of hand.

Yes, that was my impression for what the strongest combination would be (the MFL definitely won't happen, GCSE German is being done under duress because the school makes them do a language) but I've only noticed that 'must take further maths if available' thing for Cambridge - do you know if it applies elsewhere? I was a bit surprised by it because (especially if they only end up doing 3 A2s) 2xmaths and physics seems like an awfully narrow set of subjects. (I did Pure maths, applied maths, physics and chemistry back in the day - I'm a scientist not an engineer - and even that seemed quite narrow).

I haven't scoured prospectuses: my children aren't STEM, and my department doesn't demand further maths (although we like to see it). Anecdotally, I've heard it mentioned of places other than Cambridge, but I wasn't sufficiently interested to pay much attention. It's certainly an issue for Maths degrees:

www.furthermaths.org.uk/maths_entry

but I don't know if that reads over into engineering elsewhere.

It's certainly the case that quite a lot of the maths you'd want for elec eng are only in Further, although AS Further would probably be enough: complex numbers are in FP1, for example.

Right - many thanks for that.

Surprised they don't do complex numbers in standard maths A level - since they're pretty simple relative to some other maths and necessary in sciences as well as engineering - sounds like we should take a good look at the syllabuses for the maths too.

And A Level students only get to see differential equations, even first-order ones, in FP2.

We all do "back in my day" mutterings, and there is a lot of stuff that is now in A2 maths that wasn't in your classic single-award "maths pure and applied" (for example, S1 is a decent statistics course, and D1 is excellent if you're going to do computer science), but if you're going to do any sort of engineering Further Maths is where it's at.

My DH is an Electrical Engineering academic at a RG university very well regarded for engineering. He says that although FM isn't necessary, per se, first years without it have an awful lot of catching up to do. At his uni, they effectively have to self teach themselves the entirety of the FM syllabus in one semester from a textbook in order to be at the same position as the ones that did FM at A level. There is so much maths which is fundamental to engineering, such as complex and imaginary numbers for example, which isn't even touched on by the straight maths A level. Therefore, he says, you should always do FM if you have the chance to and you have any desire of going into any engineering profession at all, regardless of whether or not it is on the entry requirements. HTH

'back in the day' certainly had omissions - even with the double maths, the only time I'd come across a matrix before uni subsid maths was vaguely looking at a friend's 'modern maths' CSE course, and stats was largely absent (there was a maths and stats which the bio and economics types took).

Very interesting - I need to get DH to look at those syllabuses too. He's probably assuming that Maths is similar to the single maths A level he did, as he's tending to be lukewarm about FM in the various discussions to date.

Yet more .... I may have not found out anything much about this Systems and Control thing but extremely useful info on the maths.

Not A level but my dd did take this subject as Y9 DT option (schools doesn't offer the subject at GCSE or A level).
They did learn about the theory of circuits e.g. resistors, integrated circuits, LEDs and how they worked and then had to design and make a useful product. DH did AO Electronics at 6th form college and there was some overlap in the theory but the part that's different was the making and designing a product. I suspect that the college offer this subject because it has a wider appeal than Electronics as it will appeal to creative types as well as Science students.
DT is considered as a STEM subject BTW and I doubt whether it would be considered unfavourably by unis provided a dc takes Physics and Maths.
If the college has good results for this subject I would definitely consider it. I would ask about destinations of former students.
Chemistry only really needed for Chemical Engineering or general Engineering degrees (and that's from a former Chemistry teacher).

Chemistry is well regarded by the best Engineering Departments though, whether it is needed or not. As mentioned above, it keeps all the doors open whereas more defined subject could close down options, sadly. The individual student can demonstrate their interest in a particular form of Engineering by being involved in extra curricular clubs, for example.

If we are going to visit "back in the day" my DH did an Engineering A level in the early 1970's that was pioneered by his grammar school. Back then it was (he says) a first class preparation for an a Engineering degree because it included problem solving, using their Physics and Maths skills, gave them a broad understanding of engineering concepts and it also included project work. My DH now finds many degree educated engineers do not understand basic concepts of structural design and cannot problem solve because they don't really have an engineering brain. He felt A level engineering sorted out the real engineers from the rest.

Probably didn't phrase it very well.
ESSENTIAL A level subjects for an Engineering degree would be Maths and Physics.
DESIRABLE would be any other Science or STEM subject so Chemistry, Control systems, Computer science would fit here.
I would also look at the job prospects for Engineering graduates as this may vary across different disciplines.

Just looking at the AQA maths A-level syllabuses - there seem to be quite a few options. It certainly looks like at least AS further maths would be necessary to cover the bases. Blimey... there's a lot of it. Looks good though, the possibility to have a mix of Mechanics and Statistics plus the newfangled 'Decision' is something I wish they'd had in my day.

D1 and D2 are a bit odd. My elder didn't do D1, but it looks like my younger will do D1 and probably D2, so I'll get to see how they're taught, but at first glance they seem to miss quite a lot of the point.

D1 contains some sorting algorithms, bubble sort and quick sort, but doesn't appear to feature anything about big-O notation scalability. If you're not taught about bubble sorts scaling by the square of the number of items you're sorting, but quicksorts scaling as to n.log(n) of the number of items, then you might not unreasonably ask what the point of all the complexity is. The syllabus is quite clear: "The order of an algorithm is not expected.". The same goes for some of the other algorithms: they're interesting because they're in different complexity classes, such as Prim's algorithm being O(N^2) while Kruskal's is O(logN) (where in each case N is some combination of the number of edges and vertices I can't immediately remember). Why show two algorithms for the same job, and explicitly leave out the material which shows why the superficially more complex algorithm is the preferred choice for most purposes?

D2 has a large amount about the travelling salesman problem, but the reason why travelling salesman is interesting is because, in its decision form, it's a very clear example of an NP-complete problem --- if I show you a route visiting all the cities on a map involving driving less than X miles, you can very quickly check it by adding up the distances, but to find that route is massively harder. It's a stepping stone into teaching about the hierarchy of complexities, and travelling salesman is a hell of a lot easier to explain as a problem than some other NP-complete problems which require a lot of other maths (discrete log problem) or a just fiddly (N-satisfiability).

It would be nice to have more discrete maths (or, indeed, any discrete maths) in A Level, because it's absolutely key to modern cryptography. That was a party political broadcast by GCHQ.

Kruskal's is O(NlogN).

As a scientific software developer what I know about sorting is mainly to not to try to reinvent that wheel myself. Whereas having some understanding of the order of an algorithm and finding ways to reduce it is pretty crucial... oh well, the details of which of the optional parts are most worth doing can wait awhile!

Anyway, DH was out last night, when he returned I said very little more than 'complex numbers and a lot of other stuff are only in FM' ... so he woke up early this morning, went through the syllabus and looked at a couple of past papers, went , and then over breakfast I think we've convinced DD that she really should seriously think of doing FM, and the fact that not many do it (last year 68 did maths, 10 further maths) doesn't mean that only real mathematicians do it - some of the people who went on to do engineering or physics will have done.

Thank you so much everyone for your help on this.

How does the school offer it?

My children's school (super-selective grammar) offers maths as one option, or maths and further maths as one option but you're expected to give up some frees and be prepared to move quickly. For strong students, that's fine, but they do only get about 1.5x contact time. Every year a few kids self-teach Additional Further as well. Anecdotally, the M+FM classes are much better to be in, because everyone wants to be there.

My nephews' school takes further maths as a complete option, so they get 2x contact time. But they are studying the non-Further material with students who aren't taking FM, which apparently makes C1 and C2 fairly glacial. And that does mean that normally they would only do one other A Level, which seems a bit of a shame.

I don't know, that's one of the things we need to find out. DD's is a GS but not superselective (we don't have those up here). Lots do 4 and some do 5 A levels so I'm sure that if she does FM she'll still be able to do Physics and something else anyway. She's doing an Additional Maths thing after school at the moment, and seems to be enjoying the extra homework but also being in a self-selected group ... I think she'd prefer something more like the first of those regimes.