Any state secondary Maths teachers out there?

[Twinmummy79]

I have twins in year 8 at a good state secondary school. They are in the top set for maths but find the work really really easy, don’t feel they are learning anything new and are not being stretched. Are teacher’s hands tied by the national curriculum or can allowances be made for bright kids to be challenged further? If it weren’t so frowned upon I would see them as being good candidates for sitting gcse maths early. Reluctant to approach the school if they are stuck delivering the curriculum with no option to do anything else as am just going to feel like a pushy parent. Would love some insight into what state secondaries do with high achieving students before I open a can of worms…

they already do Simon S parallels at home plus spend hours watching numberphile videos etc

GCSE early is unlikely to happen. It's not practical, they've then got the problem of what to do with them in year 11, and it's far better to challenge them within and alongside the standard curriculum. Ask about Junior Maths Challenge (and Intermediate - year 8s can enter that too), UKMT mentoring scheme, and what is done to extend the ablest within lessons. A good teacher will try and make sure they have some more challenging questions for the ablest pupils - DD has had two maths teachers, of whom one did and one didn't.

Sitting GCSE Maths early is a bad idea for various reasons, not least - and then what?

Simon Singh's parallel maths is great, as is numberphile. Have they got any popular maths books like Matt Parker's Things to Make and Do in the Fourth Dimension?

UKMT and the maths challenges are a good way to extend bright students. As mentioned they have a mentoring scheme and monthly problems that the most able can try so it might be worth asking the school if they can sign up to that.

I'm a parent in a similar position (with DC's current teacher, but not their previous one). I also have some insight as link governor for 'more able' provision at my child's secondary school.

Less experienced maths teachers do find it difficult to stretch the more able, especially if they have had no training and no experience of more challenging maths in their own education (never assume your child's maths teacher was a maths prodigy - its much more likely they got a B/C in maths A level at school, got a 2:2 in a "maths related" subject at a non-prestigious uni, but enjoyed maths and understood it enough to want to teach others - be thankful for that, because we need all the maths teachers we can get!).

It is unreasonable to expect GCSE acceleration but not unreasonable to expect extension tasks which explore topics at greater depth. There is training for teachers available, and they know that in principle all children need to be stretched and challenge at school. I'd suggest a carefully worded email to your children's teacher, asking for extension tasks. If that doesn't work, try contacting the head of department, or the MAGT coordinator (if your school has one).

Thanks both, I agree re GCSE as it then makes a mess of the order in which they do things. Will look up those books for them. They do UK maths challenge practice papers in their spare time. Will look into the mentoring scheme too. I will have a chat with their maths teacher now I know that she might be able to give them some extra stretch stuff. They are both hard working and don’t seem to get fed up by the fact the work is stuff they already know so they will likely be fine. I just don’t want them to be turned off it as they have such enthusiasm for the subject at the moment!

It’s all a bit hard to navigate as I hated maths with a passion at school I found it boring and pointless and didn’t do the work. So there is a lot of projecting my own experiences into the situation 🤦🏼‍♀️

Thankyou @pinkflamed really helpful info

Talk to the school about whether they would be good candidates for these Maths Masterclasses:
www.talent-ed.uk/maths-masterclass-tutorials
Applications have been extended for some groups of students.

@throttlebottom thanks, they were both nominated for their school last year but alas didn’t get it, did well on the maths test and found it very straight forward - but think there were probably applicants who would benefit a lot more from it than they would. They are fairly self motivated and have parents with the means (we aren’t rich but they aren’t pupil premium). They were gutted not to get it as would have loved it… but they understood why they didn’t. They asked to be put on a list incase someone dropped out and in the mean time they are devouring parallels!

They might enjoy these weekly challenges from King's Maths School: www.kingsmathsschool.com/weekly-maths-challenge

Assuming your school doesn't offer Further Maths GCSE, then you could consider whether your twins might do it independently. For example, you could create accounts for them on Dr Frost Maths where they can work through the GCSE Further Maths topics at their own pace. If they get through the whole curriculum and do well at the mock papers you could ask your school to support them to sit the exam in school as independent candidates - the school may already do something similar for students who speak/study additional languages outside of school.

@pinkflamed that’s well worth looking into thanks so much for all your help on this!

I know they currently really want to do maths and further maths for A-Level. From reading around that the jump from gcse seems to be quite a large one. Thinking about it more, my concern was that they would coast through their gcse a bit bored then get a shock at the work involved with the next level. (Particularly once they are 16 and have less inclination to work and more social life!)

I think what I will do is get them to do all their extra work in one place rather than scribbling on bits of paper then I can show school the things they work on at home to give them an idea of what they are doing outside the classroom.