Maths and Further Maths A Level

[escapea]

We're choosing between two sixth forms and wondering about some structural differences in the teaching of maths and further maths.

At one DD would be in the same fixed group of around 20 for both subjects, and we know it would be a high ability group because the school's min GCSE entry requirement for FM is an 8. They would do all the maths syllabus in y11 and further maths in y12, doing both exams at the end of y12.

At the other school, she would be in two much smaller classes - around 10 for maths and fewer than 5 for further maths. The maths group would be more mixed (GCSE 6+), but the FM group would be 8+ again. At this school both courses will be taught in parallel over the full two years.

Assuming the maths teaching is equally good at both schools, what are likely to be the benefits or dis-benefits of the two different structures?

You mean Y12 & Y13.

As I understand it, the courses are designed to be taught in parallel.

What would happen if your DD wished to drop FM during, or at the end of, Y12?

Yes, sorry, y12 and 13.

We've looked at a few other schools that teach the two courses in series rather than in parallel, so the one that teaches them in parallel seems relatively unusual on the face of it, but maybe not?

Round here, the three closest colleges, VIth forms all teach in parallel. A friend's DD attends a college that teaches like your second example. She decided to drop FM after Y12 as she felt that would give her more chance of top grades in her remaining three. She will do an AS in FM at the end of Y13 alongside her other A levels. I thought this was a good option.

My DS isn’t sure yet if he will be taking further maths but the first option is they way they do it at his school, year 12 they do maths syllabus, year 13 the further maths. I think that’s a better way of doing things.

I prefer the first way, but the schools round here seem to do it the second way.

But why do you prefer it Witchend?

The teacher at the second school told me they could cover the Maths in greater depth, but if the number of teaching hours is the same, I'm not convinced that's true. Perhaps he meant that they would be going more slowly with the lower attaining students, giving an opportunity for the higher attaining students to tackle deeper problems. (However, as they have such small classes, it's not actually practical for them to have more than one maths set, so they don't really have a choice to do it any other way - they may just be post-justifying rather than truly believing it's best to do the courses in parallel).

I'm hoping there may be some maths teachers on here who can give me some greater insight.

You need @noblegiraffe

MY DC has just started reading Mathematics at Oxford.

The Maths A-level was easy, boring (knew it all already) & needed very little study etc. Had they spent a year doing it on its own then it would have been a complete wasted year 12.

Further Maths was hard challenging, enjoyable & required a lot of studying. They needed 2 years of work to learn, revise & practise it all. Honestly I do not see how it could have been compressed into less than a year (never mind fitting in all the MAT practise).

100% you need to pick the 2 year option for FM. The Maths A level can be effectively ignored and all of the 2 years can be spent on the actual Maths you need to learn.

Thanks Walkingdeadfangirl. Was that a state school? Did she know the A Level Maths in Y12 already because she went beyond GCSE maths in Y10/11?

Walking - your DC sounds like a real mathematician - I don't think what you've said about the maths being easy, boring and ignorable will necessarily apply the the majority doing maths&FM who are merely 'very good at maths'!

Mine did the old format, they did the maths and FM concurrently over both years, she found that fine.

My eldest reads maths at Cambridge. He is reasonably good at maths, not brilliant, not the best in his class and he found both maths and fm a piece of piss
Step was a lot harder, but you don't need to do that at Oxford

Escapea

I did maths at Oxford, and found single maths totally easy. And same for further pure, I don't really remember even thinking about whether I understood it because it was so obvious there really wasn't anything to understand. No challenge there at all.
I think the Oxford entry papers (now called MAT) were the first time I had to do anything close to think on pure maths.
I found further mechanics more of a problem, however when I got to university, I found the pure much harder, whereas the mechanics was only like further mechanics with a little bit of extra. I got all but full marks in one of my subjects. Pity the pure let me down.

I prefer the doing the single then the further simply because it more flexibility in the subjects.
We had 15 lessons a week maths (normally 8 per subject), one of which was private study and we did nothing.
For the first half term we did entirely single pure. We then started single mechanics and did 50/50 mechanics and pure for the rest of term. Then moved on to further pure, completing single mechanics before Easter. We completed further mechanics before about the January Mocks, which meant we had plenty of time to look around the subject and concentrate on what we found harder. In my case further mechanics.
It meant that we had more time to concentrate on the harder stuff.

Also the way it's arranged with the maths group having single maths in with the further makes the pace slower. The further maths group should be able to shoot through the single with very little time spent on it.
At the school I moved to, you had to have an A in GCSE (no A*) and they had all done A/S single maths and got an A (I hadn't done that as I came from a different school), to do Further maths, and I still found at times we moved painfully slowly.

With dd, who did the other way, she found that they were going over single maths for a fortnight on subjects that the further group understood and could complete easily in a couple of days. She would end up with pages of homework which she could do easily, but took time. The time would have been spent far better in concentrating on the further maths.

For the person that said you get the full 2 years on FM. You do, because you have double the lessons. But you don't need 2 years to do the single. Use that time to expand the FM time.

escapea A state school that is in need of improvement. Around 20 in Maths, 3 in FM for A level.

Yes DC loves Math and knew most of the content before because they did it in their own time, so it was easy (I know that sounds sad, but its true). School didn't go further at GCSE, apart from Statistics which to put it politely was p * * * easy.

I accept its not true for all, just giving my experience that kids capable of doing FM should and do find ordinary Maths easy. The Oxford MAT was on a different level (as is Cambridge STEP), get them to try some of the papers on their websites for comparison.

Its not about whether you need 2 years to do A level maths (you dont), its about needing 2 years to do well at Further Maths A level (you do), its deliberately designed as a really stretching 2 year course.

Second way as then mathematicians get some FM topics in year 12 to challenge them a bit more and keep them interested.

The second method sounds far better, more well rounded, and A-level maths draws on different concepts to learning techniques so opening up to a slightly wider range of students sounds very sensible and advantageous.

My school teaches Maths and FM in parallel, both are separate option blocks as they are full A-levels, 9 hours a fortnight each. Students taking FM sit AS in Y12 and have the option of dropping it after AS if it is too much. We also have some students who take FM AS and then do an EPQ in Y13. Students can take FM as one of their 3 A-levels, or as a 4th. This way of teaching seems to offer the greatest flexibility - if taught in series, what happens to pupils who find maths harder than they thought? Are they locked into doing the two? Can pupils take FM as one of three or do they have to take it as a fourth?

And what is the teaching time? Are they given double the hours for the maths and FM option block given that they’re covering it in half the time?

I’m a bit concerned about learning maths in Y12 but not sitting the exam till Y13 - how is revision structured throughout the FM course to ensure they don’t forget the A-level content?
It used to be that students could sit A-level in Y12 but not cash in till Y13, meaning they could resit poor modules, and also switch modules between maths and further maths to maximise their maths results. Now it’s linear, that can’t happen. It’s entirely possible that students could come out with a poor maths A-level result and a better FM result.

This series system is new because of the change to linear. Don’t listen to schools if they tell you they’ve done it this way for years because the change to linear and decoupling maths and FM has big implications for results. This June would be their first and only set of results and I’d be scrutinising these closely specifically for that further maths subset of students.

Thanks Noble, that's helpful. I get the impression some of the grammars and King's Maths school have done the courses in series for a few years, so it may be that more schools are now following in their wake.

I've actually just got a very helpful reply back from a maths teacher of a third school - a super-selective grammar. They teach in series, but unlike School 1 they sit the Maths exam at the end of year 12 rather than waiting to sit them both in year 13. He said ....

"We did flirt recently with switching to Option 2 but the students in Year 13 who had done Option 1 had said they were are glad to have done so.
I wouldn't choose the Sixth Form on this basis, but we considered the advantages of Option 1:
(a) It's easier to do all the A Level content together and all the Further Maths A Level content together.
(b) Students are slightly better prepared for university interviews because they're confident with the whole A Level Maths syllabus by the time they're interviewed.
(c) It allows students to get one A Level out the way at the end of Year 12. But the disadvantage is that in a minority of cases universities (e.g. Cambridge) excluded their Maths grade from the offer requirement, whereas they otherwise wouldn't have had."

The final point is obviously a big deal if you've only done 3 A Levels but at this particular Grammar all the M/FM students take a fourth A Level.

escapea schools can always find reasons to continue what is in their comfort zone and students to echo those reasons.

For (b) I would say that students are better prepared for interviews and MAT by doing FM and maths in parallel as they have experience of more advanced problem solving and techniques in FM. To reassure yourself further you could ask for the second option sixth form how they order the teaching of the maths and FM modules.
My one concern with the second school would be that they may have a slower pace for covering the maths A level modules than most schools who group the able mathematicians together if sitting both A levels.

Maths isn’t in modules any more.

At my school where FM may be in a maths group with non-FM it doesn’t matter if they cover the content ‘more slowly’, the content is covered by the end of Y13, what’s the point in rushing? The FM in my group aren’t sat twiddling their thumbs, they’re doing the ‘red’ questions from the textbook, pushing their mathematical thinking.

You really need to look at teaching time - are the FM group expected to get through the content faster because they’re grade 8 mathematicians and are therefore given less teaching time? The content remains the same so actually they are being short-changed.

some of the grammars and King's Maths school have done the courses in series for a few years, so it may be that more schools are now following in their wake.

It doesn’t matter what has been done historically though, there have been massively important changes to the assessment of maths and further maths and schools need to be stopping what they always did and reconsidering if it actually works with the new courses.

A level specification terminology of topics whether they are called ‘modules’ or ‘papers’, that is just semantics for the OP. Modular exams for A levels are of course in the past.

I moved DS3 from a school that taught maths and FM in series to a sixth form that teaches in parallel. He’s in a different group for maths and FM. The reasons I disliked the series teaching were:

1. I didn’t like the idea of taking the maths A level in Y12, when DS was still only 16 (July birthday) and not particularly mature. I didn’t think he’d take it seriously enough.
2. Maths and FM was necessarily taught in the same group, which was small so DS would have had the majority of his lessons with the same 4-5 people. Not good for him socially and sixth form should be fun as well as for study.
3. If he decided 4 subjects were too much work and wanted to drop down to 3, he wouldn’t know enough about FM to make an informed decision.
4. He was likely to take maths for his degree. If FM proved too hard in Y13 it would be too late to change his mind for UCAS unless he took a gap year.

As it is he has dropped down to 3, hasn’t dropped FM and has applied for a maths degree.

Now your first sixth form had quite a big maths/FM group so 2) won’t apply.

School A. I've had experience of tutoring someone doing it in parallel, who was being taught FM content when he hadn't covered the relevant maths content. Made things very difficult for him. I know that could have been the school not being sufficiently co-ordinated but having seen it, I was very put off the idea of teaching them in parallel.

I agree that OP shouldn't choose the six form just based on how math and FM are taught. If the teaching is good enough for both school, then which school provide best support for university application? How is the atmosphere among students? I mean are these students all work hard for university?

DS's six form did the math and further math parallel and this didn't affect him much. As PP mentioned, for DC who is good at math and is taking further math, math A level is quite easy, he finished his math work in the lesson quickly, then did other math papers on math lessons.

One point to think about is school A has more student doing further math, that might be good. As OP didn't mention which subjects your DC is choosing for university, if assume it is math, then more students doing further math might mean more support on math. For example, my DS's school is very big, has a couple of further math class, and they also have a weekly lesson to teach Oxford MAT and Cambridge STEP, DS was applying Cambridge, and find the lesson helpful, also it's good that you have fellow students doing the same hard work as you, as he had to spend lots of time learning STEP 2& 3, that was hard work. While at his friends school, it's small, only a few students took further math, teacher just offered him that he can go to ask questions if he has any with STEP, as nobody else need that support, so there is no formal arrangement.