New Maths GCSE is properly hard isn't it?

[Somerville]

I've seen this discussed, but I only just clicked how much harder it is. DD is revising, and has been given a maths past paper to do, but no answer booklet. So she asked me to mark it.

I have maths A level, but struggled a bit

Differentiation, 3-d trig, factorising quadratic equations??! I'm sure I didn't do any of that at GCSE (in mid 90's). Is A level harder too?

Differentiation, 3-d trig, factorising quadratic equations??! I'm sure I didn't do any of that at GCSE (in mid 90's).

I did all that in my GSE in the early 80's. There are only a few things I don't recognise in my son's work (he's also year 11), such as circle theorum. I also think the current syllabus is light on statistics as I seem to remember doing them in a lot more detail than my son's current papers.

TBH, I did all those at O level in 70s. They were dropped if you were doing "New Maths" which included Venn Diagrams and matrices etc, but that was CSE I think. I know that some streams in my year did New Maths while the rest of us did the old stuff.

Jux I did 16+ which was for more borderline pupils. I managed to pass the O Level (so I have the relevant certificate) but I think I managed to bypass the difficult stuff you're all talking about. My mental Maths is very good and I struggle to think of a situation (aside from helping the DC with their Maths) in everyday life when I've felt stumped by my lack of more complicated mathematical knowledge!

My daughter's doing IGCSE maths - to be honest, the only differentiation that is on it as far as I can tell is fairly basic (polynomial); she's doing it early and it is one of the topics they left till last. Unfortunately as a result I think it has been presented in cookbook fashion - do this and this - though I may be wrong. I have gone through a basic derivation with her to make sure she understands where it comes from.

Surds I remembered doing in year 9 - not UK, and we did have 2 main levels of maths at that age - they like a number of other maths topics can easily fit in at several different levels. Actually, for able maths kids, there is a lot of interesting mathematics that is usually left to later undergraduate years but is perfectly accessible earlier, as it doesn't necessarily rely on the foundation of other skills.

Non calculator paper from 1984 - not the board I sat as it doesn't exist any more

www.cambridgeassessment.org.uk/Images/1984j-mathematics-olevel-questionpaper.pdf

DS is at an indie doing igcses.

sassh I could do about 50% of those papers. But there again I've not really had cause to use the other 50% of the mathematical concepts covered since, so have no recall as to how to do them some 30 years down the line!

Interesting sashh, I reckon the current GCSE stands up pretty well against that. Obviously it’s got matrices on it which aren’t on the syllabus any more (they’re on further maths) but they’re not that difficult as far as matrix questions go. A lot of the questions wouldn’t be out of place at all on a paper today, except for the terrible layout and the use of tables for trig values.

What does strike me as better now, is that 1984 paper didn’t seem to have any reasoning. The circle theorem question, for example, Q4b, is 5 marks for working out some angles. Nowadays they’d have to provide their reasoning for all the angles e.g. OCD = 40 because base angles in an isosceles triangle are equal, so ABT = 40 because of the alternate segment theorem. In 1984, all they needed to do was write ‘40’.

My son is retaking his maths gcse this year as he is annoyed he got an A and knows he could have achieved an A*. I'm still trying to work out how I scored 82% yet came out with a D .

Did you sit the old Foundation paper? That only went up to a D.

@noblegiraffe- trig exact values. Is it worth my son learning them? He’s aiming for a 6 (possibly a 7 but that might be wishful thinking!) It seems like a lot of work for only a few potential marks.

RosieLig,

There aren't many to learn.

Scroll down a bit for a table that may help:

mrlyonsmaths.wordpress.com/2015/11/02/remembering-trigonometric-values/

noblegiraffe me? I have no idea.

Oh I like that table and the gif - nice, thanks!

Early 80's got A in O Level...
This bodmas.. thing is so odds...
But all the rest was there....

A pdf list of formulae that need to be learnt:

qualifications.pearson.com/content/dam/pdf/GCSE/mathematics/2015/teaching-and-learning-materials/W148-GCSE-Maths-A5-Poster.pdf

Yep Rosie like Frendo said it’s not actually that difficult to learn them - the sin and cos ones at least. The table given doesn’t actually show how easy it is, because you can build the values up step by step as illustrated here: www.mrbartonmaths.com/blog/remembering-trigonometry-ratios/ the bit with the picture of the hand.
So you write 0 1 2 3 4, then square root, then divide by 2, et voila. Sin one way, cos the other. Tan is a bit trickier (it’s sin(a)/cos(a)) but maybe he could memorise those?

Obviously, once he has memorised them (and it doesn’t take that long, just write them out once every so often) he needs to be able to use them to answer questions, which is harder!

It’s how I remember the trig values, I can never be bothered with drawing out triangles.

Differentiation is new to GCSE. As is functions, and set theory.

And were all in O Level in the late 1970s. Possibly O Levels plural: I did two, a "modern" one (heavy on the set theory and matrices) and a "traditional" one (heavy on the calculus). For example, simple integral and differential calculus, up to volumes of rotation, were in both.

Of course, simple set theory was in primary maths in the early 1970s. Very modern, very fashionable. Tories hated it, of course.

@noblegiraffe- brilliant, thanks!

I definitely did Venn diagrams at primary level, I'm pleased to see them back on the GCSE syllabus.

Thank you to @noblegiraffe for inspiring me to look up splitting coefficients. I now have a great new tool for quadratics. (Not that I suspect I will need it any time soon).

Write the formulae out, one each on a small card index type card, and blu-tak them to the kitchen wall opposite his place at the table, or somewhere he'll see them every day, then he can read one or two each t8me he goes there. They'll be learnt within a week.

I definitely did Venn diagrams at primary level,

Does the new GCSE include modular arithmetic, that other staple of "modern" maths in the past?

I did the first year of GCSEs and all these subjects were there. Not in favour of making things hard for the sake of it, but recent Maths GCSEs have been pitched so low that there's no challenge or differentiation (sorry) at the top end and potentially very good mathemeticians can coast through years 10 and 11 before being smacked in the face with the big step up to A level.

Yes, the old GCSE was crap for the top end, but a lot of schools did Further or Additional maths GCSE with them which worked well and at least the GCSE paper wasn’t ridiculous for the rest.

My DD sat her GSCEs last year. She did suffer from a lack of self confidence with Maths and was originally down to take the higher paper. She was getting low marks as she said she was freezing and panicking when she looked at the questions that are designed to test the higher ability candidates. Her school changed her entry to Foundation and she got a 5 which was more than enough for her to move onto college. I'd rather they used Further Maths to stretch the higher ability candidates, I think the higher paper has too wide a range to cater to, it nearly destroyed my daughters confidence and I'm very glad the school decided to move her to foundation.