Maths teacher says the new maths gcse is "loads harder"

[WhoTheFuckIsSimon]

I kind of knew it would be but wasn't thinking about it till he said this. Dd is in year 10. So yep, great, guinea pigs.

Some of the other m&ms I know are really quite worried. One parent was told by a different maths teacher that they haven't seen papers, etc yet so they're unsure what they need to teach! Which sounds crazy.

School have upped maths lessons from 3 a week to 5 a week as the school seem to be panicking. So I'm reassured that even if the exam is harder they're getting more teaching.

Are any of the Letts type revision guides worth getting? Or are they all useless because I presume Letts don't know what the new exams will cover if the teachers don't yet?

IGCSE changes are (IMO not to my certain knowledge) inevitable though, because the new GCSE grade 9 is designed to be higher than a current A, and as noblegiraffe* has already said, they will no longer carry funding / league table points. So state schools won't be able to sit them, and private schools will not want to offer a less competitive qualification. That will take away most if not all of the market for them.

If the changes mean that GCSE students are covering what was AS material (as suggested by Edexcel here) then when it comes to the students taking A Levels then there will be a presumption that they have covered that material.

If the independent schools don't take the new GCSEs then they will have to offer 'filler' classes so as not to harm their A Level results, won't they?

IGCSE covers a lot of that stuff from A-level anyway, e.g. functions and calculus.

What might push independent schools to the new GCSE is that parents will want that level 9 for their kids. However, the government has suggested exam boards also overhaul IGCSE so that they are GCSE-comparable. If they do, then they will be allowed back into the league tables.

Do you think so noble? I reckon IGCSEs are going to be out for a while. It got spun as a u-turn when they were taken out, I think any Tory government won't want to go back on that.

As a state school teacher I'm perfectly happy for indies to stick with alternative qualifications. Selective independents would hoover up the grade 9s so if they're out of the picture, that means more for the rest of us

I'm not sure independents would be able to sell a qualification which is seen as worse than the alternative. I've no experience of the private sector but I thought they took IGCSE because they were always banging on about how much harder it was.

Edexcel and Cambridge are already planning to update their IGCSEs for content and 9-1 grading; see update - latest for schools.
qualifications.pearson.com/en/qualifications/edexcel-international-gcses-and-edexcel-certificates/international-gcse-mathematics-a-2009.html
DS1 (current year 9) has already been taught inverse functions, Venn diagrams and nth term (from A/AS level?) as part of his IGCSE syllabus so I expect the transition will be a smooth one.

Noble - just been going through posts and appreciate your comments on how teachers will probably assess targeted grades.

DD has been given predicted grades of 7 in Eng Lang & Lit and 8 in Maths. In her end of term maths test she got an 8, which sounds brilliant as I guess that's a strong A, but not sure how accurate it is under new system.

Sorry Noble another question from me - if I read your earlier post right - the new pass in the stats will no longer be the C equivalent but a B equivalent ? So effectively a good GCSE will be A*-B ??