Rishi to overhaul maths GCSE - resit requirements

[noblegiraffe]

I mean, I know this is all hot air because he doesn't have any time before his government is in the bin to implement anything but:

https://inews.co.uk/news/education/gcse-reform-lessons-tax-returns-rishi-sunak-maths-plan-2577578

There's a paywall so you can read the text here https://x.com/robotmaths/status/1696584449918419099?s=61&t=U9XrcF693-JpMxeIueYG7g

So it seems that the best that the maths to 18 team could come up with was teaching kids to fill in tax returns. Which won't be useful for most of them.

However most of the chat is around the 'resit' problem.

I've attached the resit pass rates which are pretty shocking. Better for English than maths though, which is....weird? Is that a maturity thing?

"“[Ministers] are taking resits extremely, extremely seriously. They know that it’s bad for the nation, bad for kids and bad for educational institutions,” a different member of the maths to 18 advisory group told i.
“I think the best thing to conclude is that the GCSE resit route should continue, but that there must be adequate alternative forms of provision for those for whom that’s not appropriate.”

No discussion of whether the resit could actually be taught any better though.

What is shocking is those grade 2 or below figures! Why are kids resitting if they are only at that level? Did they all get 3s first time around? I am increasingly of the opinion that just scraping a 3 first time around thanks to some fab teaching at school can do some a disservice. They are still a long way from a 4 but yet are destined to resit GCSE because 'that's the rule'.

adequate alternative forms of provision for those for whom that’s not appropriate Well that would be nice. See my moans on a couple of other threads re trying to get DD taught functional skills.

The main issue I have with all of this "must pass" stuff is that the grading means that someone always has to not pass.
It's an absolute nonsense to pretend that everyone can achieve a grade 4 or above when the whole thing is set up so they can't.
And that's quite aside from the difficulty of teaching the students who need to resit.

This.

It's back to Mr Gove wanting everyone to be above average....

I'm no maths expert but I'm pretty sure that's not possible!

Thing is, between Y10 and 11 it is entirely reasonable to expect a child to go up a GCSE grade.

So if they got a 3, they should realistically be able to go up to a 4 by the end of Y12.

But they don't, because GCSE resit is an add-on that isn't valued and often poorly attended. Maybe a couple of lessons a week.

In my school, we don't offer lessons to students who resit. We don't have many (because the entry requirements for sixth form mean they don't get in) but we don't have the staffing to do it.
Which is shocking, and yet totally unsurprising.

It terrible - really there should be no needs for resits - how can I child attend School from 4 to 16 and fail maths and English. Year after year these child are being failed by the system. The system is set up so it ensures children do fail - currently about 30% of each cohort will fail each year, if in a given year they perform better they will shift the marks so some still fail.

Surely everyone should be supported to pass maths/ English within that time frame, rather than allowing them and having them to continue to resit - which going by the table is not working. I believe both maths and English need an overhaul and for many a functional skills type test would be far more useful and achievable.

DD got 3hrs (2hr+1hr) per week for each of her Maths and English.

The marks band of grade 3 is very wide @noblegiraffe , can someone who got a v.low 3 really go up a whole grade?

Then of course you have the 'issue' of college doing a different board from school, so the questions are subtly different (for English at least).

I think some teenagers have no interest in passing it. They are forced to attend the class but no-one can make them revise (or even listen) so they turn up and tune out.

My friend attended a maths gcse evening class at college (as an adult you paid for it) in order to get a B grade (few years ago). He said it was a nightmare - loads of full time students attended but were not engaged some repeatedly saying ‘I don’t understand it’ but not listening to the tutor. Others chatting with friends and low level disruption - one kid was removed from a lesson. The teens said they had to attend for their college course.

Around 5 of the class members were desperate to get a A B or C grade for uni or a job or an access course and had to put up with immature nonsense from 16-18 year olds who didn’t want to be there and they didn’t pass on results day.

If Sunak offered them £300 for a c (equivalent) or above I wonder if they would have been more engaged!

Why don’t they push able kids to do the gcse in year 8 or 9? Why wait until Year 11? This may make gcse class sizes smaller for the kids who want to pass but find it hard.

Because GCSEs should be taken in key stage 3 not key stage 4. Schools shouldn't even be starting them in year 9, although many do.

Plus any student continuing to A levels in sciences needs to keep their maths going. The ones capable of high passes in y8/9 will be just those students.

DD (24) hasn’t got Maths GCSE yet despite 3 attempts. She has dyscalculia. Shea’s tried loads to get through it but just hasn’t happened. She knows she’ll have to try again at some point and it did stop her doing things previously but she has managed to get a 2.1 in MFL from a RG university recently.

DD tried very hard on her resits, but can't focus for much more than an hour, so the exams are too many and too long.

Our school used to do this for Maths and English Lang. But it brought down the English results - although maths seemed successful, English needs maturity as well as ability. One of my DSs was really hampered by this, top marks in maths taken a year early, but a lot lower in English, despite getting top marks in orher essay based subjects just a year later.
They also found unis like GCSEs to be sat all in one year.

It depends on the reason for the 3. If the low 3 is the result of hard work, tutoring and consistent attendance, then probably not.

But if it's the result of arsing around in lessons, lack of any revision, poor attendance that now improves, it would be entirely possible. But the kid would have to be motivated to do better.

My child is very able, but if he had done maths GCSE year in year 8 or 9 he would have got a 4 or 5. He needs a 7 in maths to do computer science for A level. You carnt penalise these kids for less able ones. It's not fair

I suspect funding squeezes in schools and in FE, plus the competition to demonstrate lots of top grades and progress to certain universities, are part of the problem. If many students already feel they're no good at Maths, can never be any good at Maths, they may need something which is different in approach and resourced properly.

My Foster son has learning disabilities and attended a special school where he wasn't stretched at all and got a GCSE Maths level 3. We had to fight for him to be allowed to sit any GCSE's at all. Eventually they agreed to double Science and Food technology and Maths. He got GCSE in Science at level 4 and 3 and Food Technology at level 4 and level 3 in Maths. He went to college and took BTEC Sport Level 2 plus GCSE Maths and Functional Skills English because he was not allowed to sit any English exams except Entry Levels at his special school. In October just 6 weeks after starting college he passed the Functional Skills in English. In June he passed his BTEC Sports (4 X GCSE equivalents) and passed his GCSE Maths at level 4. He attended a Maths lesson every week except 2 weeks after his Mum died. Now he's moved up to study the Level 3 BTEC in Sports Performance and Coaching (equivalent to 2x A levels) and GCSE English. It just takes some children an extra year or two to get there. I wish he could do his double science again to get 2x grade 4/5. It's important that resits are offered to any DC that wants them.

Thanks for this, @noblegiraffe. Food for thought indeed about having a system with guaranteed failure built in.

My DSD is in her 20s and despite many retakes has never achieved higher than a D and then 3. Last time was a 2. She did want to do some sort of lower level maternity support worker training or a nurse assistant apprenticeship type role, but every one we have come across in reality requires a 4 or above, which she will never achieve. (And yes she/we have tried and looked at everything.)

She is the embodiment of the stats in that table above: with each retake, her result has got worse.

Yet she works as a carer (a senior) with responsibility for vulnerable people, some other staff, medications and safeguarding. She has health & social care BTECs. But she can't get onto any further training courses or apprenticeships, let alone a degree course, without that Maths grade 4.

It's so frustrating that these are the real life consequences of the current Maths policy. DP once said sadly, 'it's like she's good enough for shitty low-paid care work, but not good enough for the NHS'.

I don't think GCSE maths is fit for purpose - in fact the government has effectively admitted this, as teachers have to pass a numeracy test as well as having a decent GCSE grade.

We do want a better understanding of mathematics, but we don't need everyone to do trigonometry and quadratic equations - although we do need to have the opportunity to study them for those who are capable and/or might need them.

What would be really helpful to employers is for everyone to understand measures, percentages, basic statistics, how to use a formula, things like that. And we want people to be really good at those - so 80% reliable not 40%.

I'd do one of two things, and I'm not sure which would work better.

1. Abandon GCSE maths as the benchmark, and have a more numeracy-skills based test with a fairly high pass mark which can be taken at whatever point is appropriate, and re-taken as necessary. Pupils would still continue studying maths even once they've passed it, taking the GCSE or some other qualification at 16.

2. Split maths into "numeracy" and "algebra and geometry", putting the stuff everyone needs in the former. Everyone does numeracy, a&g is expected of the top half of the cohort. Both should be available as free evening classes in the same way that GCSE maths is now, so that if someone realises later on that they do need better maths skills, they can access that. You could set papers for both subjects so that the full range of GCSE grades are available - although there would still need to be tiers.

Oh, and we need more good maths teachers. Or even just more adequate maths teachers.

@lanthanum I'm in the middle of watching a long 'oral history' recording of a great uncle describing how they did 'Arithmetic' at school, including High School, as a subject in its own right. It was very important for them to study arithmetic he says, in his lovely accent, because as farmers they did their own accounts and needed quick calculation skills at the markets.

Other pupils like my great aunt studied 'extra mathematics and sciences' and were 'real suffragettes' (!) and went to teaching colleges. Ah bless him. He was born around 1930, rural NW Eng.

GCSE resits absolutely should be available for those 16-18 year olds who want to do them, but they should not be mandatory. The govt are setting teenagers up to fail- some will never achieve a grade 4 GCSE or level 2 Maths/ English.
The quality of maths courses post 16 is also poor. Two lessons of maths per week, with no time to explain concepts properly and a lot of self directed study. This is for teenagers who struggled to understand maths the first time round! I spent many, many hours providing additional support to my dc for his GCSE maths resit. There is no way he would have passed it with two lessons a week and self directed study alone. Not all teenagers have that support at at home.

Has she looked in to taking functional skills level 2? That's equivalent to a GCSE grade 4, but it tends to be more practical maths than theoretical maths, which some people find easier.

It's very odd. I think my niece is very bright, has a first in English Literature and very good at languages such as Latin, French and Chinese. She has done several resits of Maths and just can't get higher than a D. I wonder how important it really is, it's certainly very demoralising for her and limits options for further study or careers.