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.

Thank you so much for reading my long post! I will look into that again. I did once before with her, and we were told Functional Skills wasn't acceptable because getting on these training courses (eg maternity support worker) and apprenticeships is application-based and very competitive and GCSE 4 was required. There's the 'brochure theory' and the application reality iykwim. Getting that 4 would just open up so many doors to her, but it's not going to happen until the rules change. Her original 'D' looks quite good now!

She's got BTEC level 3 fgs.

But I'll check again. Thanks so much for responding. (Sorry, I'm tired if not making much sense.)

There's no paywall btw.

I vaguely wonder if maths could be better taught using right/left brain theories and maximising the connections between the two. I don't know how much Maths teaching uses psychology, but I think it would help students who struggle to even understand the skills required.

I think requiring GCSE maths grade 4 for some jobs is a v weird requirement. Even for nursing, you don't need to know trigonometry or most of GCSE maths, there could be a specific exam. And for teaching? I know someone who wanted to teach art and tried and failed for years to pass her GCSE maths and had to give up.
As a foreigner, i dont understand it... I think first of all that most countries don't have exams at 15, it's a crap time in life to be stressing over exams, but insisting on this maths qualification for jobs that are unrelated is just really weird.
DP teaches maths resits in a college. The kids don't want to be there, it's really morale sapping for everyone.

@Fawful I agree with you. Possibly Rishi is a natural at maths and doesn't understand that other people's brains are wired differently.

For very many people, it's not that their brains are wired differently, but that some wires got missed earlier in their maths education. If you don't understand something in maths, you can often get by for a while by just doing the right thing by rote, but then later you come completely unstuck. I once had a fascinating time unpicking the problems of a sixth form student. She was doing calculus, but the real reason she was struggling was because she'd missed an algebra concept usually taught in year 7.

Unfortunately, it's not always easy to find the gaps without starting over - and of course teenagers are more likely to think "thank goodness we've moved on to the next topic" rather than "I still don't get that - I must ask for a bit more help and keep working on it."

@lanthanum Interesting, but I come from a family of musicians, artists, linguists, English teachers who all seize up in panic at the sight of a maths paper! We aren't stupid but simply unable to speak the language of Maths, I think. I have often wondered if there could be some way to activate my left brain or improve its connection to the right side and if that would make the symbols become clear. The only Maths topic I can relate to is algebra, because it features letters. I tried hard at school, had Saturday extra tuition, had a very kind teacher - but looking at the board everything just became a meaningless blur! I think some people really do have different brains, and it works the other way. I know people who are great at maths or computer science but struggle to read and write, and would be in a panic if asked to improvise music or paint a picture. Still, I'm not dismissing what you say, since I'd rather there was hope for those who struggle with Maths. I just think people do have different strengths and this is related to individual psychology and brain activity.

@user9630721458 Or maybe that could change.

I used to be rubbish at anything imaginative - could not improvise (grade 8 piano, plenty of music experience, could do I-IV-V harmonisation), had to base creative writing on true stories, art was a no-go, and even my dreams were extremely prosaic.

That HAS changed - I'm still not hugely imaginative, but not completely non-creative; I can now improvise a little, and my dreams are often now adventure stories with no apparent connection to anything! I'm fascinated by the dreams in particular - it's a very noticeable change and did seem to develop alongside the daytime creativity.

I've never been good at maths. I've realised as I've got older it's not so much that I don't understand the concepts taught (to a point, I'm no genius)but what I struggle with is processing and being able to hold numbers in my head in order to do something with them.

This doesn't get better with age either - so for example, if I get a 6 digit passcode on one screen and have to swap to another screen to type it in it might take me numerous attempts flicking back and forth because I cannot hold the numbers in my head.

This doesn't happen with words and I've always been good at English and MFL.

I assume now it's a form of dyscalculia but nobody had heard of that when I was at school.

It's not dyscalculia. Dyscalculia isn't really a thing - people who think they have a special need related to maths generally either have been taught the foundations of maths extremely poorly which means they struggle with later concepts or they have another SEN, e.g. poor working memory, slow processing speed, which accounts for their difficulties with maths.

Being unable to hold numbers in your head is a working memory issue. I've got a crap working memory, my mental arithmetic is bad and when doing calculations I have to write down every step of working because I can't hold the result of one calculation in my head while I do another. Funnily enough this makes me a better maths teacher because when demonstrating I always break down the steps really clearly on the board - because I have to!

How lovely! Your brain is an amazing thing, and I suppose it is capable of learning and developing different areas at different times, which gives me hope I may one day be able to understand Maths. It's particularly interesting about your dreams and how they mirror more creative thinking during the day.

This may be a stupid question, but other posters pointed out that having set grade boundaries means that a certain percentage of pupils are going to get a 3 or lower. Given the importance placed on getting a 4, why don’t they just have a certain number of marks required to pass and then have grade boundaries for everything higher?

How do they work out grade boundaries and marking for the November resits, given that most of people taking them are those that struggle with maths? (small number of people who presumably couldn't write them in June, and possibly small number who are trying to improve grades on Higher - does higher even exist as a resit?). But given that the majority are going to be those struggling to get a 4, it must be more difficult to judge the difficulty of the paper and come up with equivalent grade boundaries than when there is the full spectrum of abilities and marks to compare it to. Do they compare it somehow to the June paper? Is there evidence of it being easier/harder to get a 4 on the resit?

Some colleges seem to offer good teaching, where they do get maths several times a week, but others just have one long morning where they do all the academic stuff, and 2 or 3 hours of maths (plus sometimes English) for a teen who already struggles means that they don't get that much out of the lesson if they tune out after an hour. Or if they miss it one week, that's a long time without lessons. And the absence of regular homework that can be insisted on also makes it difficult, as they need the practice questions to make sure things are remembered. The motivated ones will probably do it themselves, but the unmotivated ones will find it much harder when there isn't a teacher insisting, marking, giving out detentions, setting regular tests that count, etc.

So I'm not surprised that some of the resit pass stats are so low, as there is such a mixture of students doing them, for varying reasons and with varying attitudes.

How do they work out grade boundaries and marking for the November resits, given that most of people taking them are those that struggle with maths?

They attempt to match the standard of work produced at each grade with the standard of work produced in the June series. If we set a mock paper you'll often hear 'oh but it's a November paper so the grade boundaries are weird'.

Last November Edexcel (the most popular board for maths) just copied and pasted over the June grade boundaries and used those, which was really odd. Exact same grade boundaries.

It does sound difficult to get it right. I hope they have various trial questions that they can test out on previous year's cohorts somehow, although I know it would be difficult with security. I know from tutoring that sometimes the smallest change to a question that examiners might think makes very little difference and is basically testing the same thing actually really throws some of the struggling pupils.

Our head of sixth brought up resitting students yesterday, and how low the pass rate for maths is, really. We do allow students to resit English or maths alongside their Level 3 studies, and we also have a small number of students who join us without GCSEs (usually from outside the UK) who do both (one in Y12, and one in Y13).

Our pass rate for maths post 16 is a bit better than the national average BUT we only offer Level 3 courses, so it's not really a fair comparison. I think part of the issue is motivation (obviously), and being in a class of students who really don't want to be there isn't the best learning environment!

One thing we're trying this year, is the option for students who got a 4/5 but want to resit for a 5/6 to join our English and maths resit classes. One, this hopefully gives them more options when they leave us, but two, it will hopefully increase the overall motivation of the resit classes, and make them a better learning environment.

What I'd really love data on is student progress over time post 16- if students who get 3s are eventually working their way up to 4s, but students who get 1s and 2s aren't (for example), then perhaps we need to look at other options for those students?

I've taught (in science) students who struggle with really basic arithmetic, even at 15/16- they rely on a calculator to do 2 digit addition or subtraction- if they have to use a decimal or a negative number, then they have no idea if the answer on their calculator is sensible. Some of them struggle to read off a scale (e.g. temperature, from an analogue display) or tell the time from a clock. I'm not sure two years of additional teaching is enough for these students.

Equally, I've taught students who are borderline 3/4 across maths and science, and with enough chances, and small group teaching, they probably will get their 4, which is great!

You don't need trigonometry, or anything near it to get a 4. Nurses have to do drug calculations- I very much want them to be numerate (and have a sense of number strong enough to notice immediately if there's a mistake).

Teachers have to do a lot of data processing in a lot of jobs- It's obviously not as essential as it is for a nurse, but I do think a teacher who can't manage 4 in maths would struggle with some aspects of the job.

We'd surely never accept a teacher of e.g. maths, who couldn't manage a 3 in English?

Tony Blaire stated that he wanted 75% of people to be above average.

Well I did consider how he could do it, depending on the type of average:
Median: impossible by it's definition has to have 50% below.
Mode: Possible but totally irrelevant to improving standards.
Mean: It is possible, but only if the bottom 25% fail so miserably they bring the average mark down, and I'm sure he didn't mean that.

Personally I think that a functional skills maths, possible even instead of GCSEs for those who would be looking at 2 or below, would work better. So they'd learn how to check change, calculate wages, do recipes, etc. Things that would be useful in real life.

I think politicians should also have to pass a GCSE in statistics and not misusing them too...

My dad is fond of pointing out that half the population are of below average maths ability.

Therefore it is impossible for everyone to pass maths GCSE and ridiculous to suggest that kids who fail it should constantly resit for years. It would be much more sensible to offer functional skills to all kids who are predicted not to pass gcse or who fail it the first time.

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.

The direction this country is going in, it would be more productive to teach them how to calculate benefit entitlement.

What I'd really love data on is student progress over time post 16- if students who get 3s are eventually working their way up to 4s, but students who get 1s and 2s aren't (for example), then perhaps we need to look at other options for those students?

IMO a lot of 1s and 2s will have other stuff going on not necessarily related to their true capability. DS got either a 1 in maths, teacher assessed because it was 2020. He has an EHCP and refused to attend most of secondary school or engage with anything educational (long story!). They probably couldn't give him any more because they rarely saw him.

However he's actually always been good at mental maths. As in he can do calculation in is head fairly effortlessly. Far better than I can.

He couldn't keep up with the resit because he's missed all that foundational work around the concepts of trig, algebra and so on but I think under perfect circumstances where he was engaged and the teaching worked for him he could probably get a decent grade. Perfect circumstances rarely exist though.

It's all ridiculous. The exam boards are told they have to maintain their grade profiles (ie roughly the same number of kids getting each grade) otherwise they get into trouble for making the grade boundaries too low. But then the teachers are told they can't have anyone getting below a 4! And that's without even mentioning that the whole curriculum is just too hard. Even the foundation papers are tricky these days.

There are too few skills-based questions these days, and too many problem solving questions even at the lower levels. Fair enough, you should need very strong problem solving skills to get a 9, but working consistently hard despite not being a good mathematician should be enough to get a 4. And if it's not enough, then it's madness to suggest that everyone should be able to get a 4!

Why are kids set up to fail? There are kids who will never get a GCSE grade 4 in maths if they took the course a thousand times. Better to have a numeracy qualification & a separate qualification for all the other stuff, most people leave school & never use half of what they are taught, qualifications are only used in two ways, to get a job or to qualify to get to the next level of education.

Can you explain your table please?

In my school, any kid that doesn’t meet the 5 grade 4-9 including English and Maths is waved off to college after GCSEs.

My impression is that the resits at college are treated as an add on and not really taken seriously.

Some schools allow the students to stay for an extra year to resit. Then they are taught by familiar staff and have the opportunity to pick up an extra course or two. This seems like a more successful way to pass a resit!