£600 per pupil for every extra pupil studying maths in sixth form

[noblegiraffe]

Announced in the Budget today was £600 per pupil for every extra pupil who takes A-level maths or Core Maths in 6th form. This will be from 2019 and will use student numbers from this year as a baseline.

While this seems like a nice boost to maths, words cannot express how pissed off I am by the 'extra pupils' caveat. Schools, like mine, who are already offering Core Maths and have piled high maths classes due to lower than other schools' entry requirements will be penalised.

If we want any extra funding, what that will mean is even bigger class sizes than we already have (20+), accepting students who probably shouldn't be on the course, and more work for the classroom teacher (and I bet that the extra money will not be coming my way).

At DS college, Maths is the single biggest subject
but its the fact that current excellence in teaching is not being recognised (only some random "extra") that gets my goat.

THere is a maths specialist school in London who will get zilch because all of their kids already do maths
talk about poorly designed incentives

www.theguardian.com/education/2017/nov/23/sums-dont-add-up-on-budgets-maths-pledge-says-labour

The Guardian says the maths doesn't work!

Well, if all your students already do Maths, you don't need an incentive. That's the point of an incentive! They don't pay current Maths/Physics teachers extra either (well, maybe an invented TLR3), but they do pay an incentive for new ones to train.

We don't need an incentive, but we do need money, which means that the school will try to get that money any way it can, including shoving a load of unsuitable candidates onto courses that come with cash.

They, of course, will not take the maths teachers' views or workload into consideration.

Re: pushing STEM in schools:
"A law that will force schools to let colleges, apprenticeship providers and University Technical Colleges talk to pupils about their study options will come into force in January, according to guidance published this morning by the Department for Education."

schoolsweek.co.uk/schools-will-be-forced-to-promote-technical-education-from-january/

I know I saw it! Part of my job role is 'supporting' UTCs. Nothing would make me encourage a child to go to one...

The main problem with UTCs seems to be that you don't know whether it will still be open by the time the Y8s you are promoting them to get to the end of Y9.

Hopefully we would all agree that the Core maths AS is not an equivalent to an AS in the traditional maths. Certainly young people wrestling with the (now defunct) C1/C2/applied module of the main AS maths qualification wouldn't see it as an equivalent in terms of difficulty/challenge etc.

Piggywaspushed - very intrigued by your comment. General careers advice or more specific UTC bias?? Without compromising any confidentiality etc.

And, more generally with all these providers coming in just WHEN will the schools find the time to teach??

Core maths isn't meat to be equivalent to maths. The idea is that it is a support to A level students. may centres offer it as a supplement to business studies, economics and science. I think that is made clear to students.

Re the UTCs. The ones I have worked with have very few qualified teachers and have a huge staff turnover. Students are fairly often actually students shunted over from the last chance saloon.

I have no idea how the UTCs are planning on touting their wares. All parents have already received letters outlining their existence. It certainly is destined to fail around here as students begin their third tier of education in year 9. Very few parents would then choose to uproot their children again one year later!

user do you actually know anything about Core Maths? It's a fab qualification and is aimed at an entirely different audience to those taking A-level maths.
It's designed to be taken as a 4th AS alongside 3 A-levels, and is to support study in the sciences and social sciences for those who weren't good enough for A-level or who didn't want to take it.
It's to solve the issue of those subjects suffering due to lack of maths practice and to smooth access to university courses where there is a need for maths post-16, just not A-level maths. It's about 2 hours a week of lessons and keeps the maths ticking over nicely. It's very different to A-level, very practical.

Yes noble giraffe I do & I stand by my views thankyou.

But your views are odd because I don't think anyone thinks Core Maths is equivalent to A-level.

Well let's just call it mathslite!

I thought that said mathshite !

never!

Heaven forfend!!

user, your views seem slightly odd to me.

Yes, of course Core Maths is 'lighter' than a full A-level in Maths - because it is an AS-level.

It is, as i understand it, different in focus from Maths AS (DS is at a school that still does the 4 formally-taken AS-levels / 3 A-levels thing) but not a 'lesser' qualification - it just selects a different suite of skills from the 'large pool of things that could be included in a Maths curriculum'.

It's like saying Eng Lang GCSE is Englishlite, compared with English Lit. That's not true - they're just different.

I took a degree that had a Maths element throughout the first year. Did I see that course as 'Mathslite'? No, it was billed as, and was, maths for our subject - a selection of university-level Maths to specifically support the subject we studied, rather that being iof use mainly for those studying 'Maths for Maths' sake'. I understand core Maths to be similar?