Yearly warning not to take A-level maths with less than a 7 at GCSE

[noblegiraffe]

GCSE results day and therefore A-level sign-up day is coming.

So with that in mind I just thought I'd post the table of conversions from GCSE to A-level results for maths to show that there is a strong correlation. This is because A-level Maths basically starts with a quick review of grade 8/9 GCSE algebra content and then gets more difficult. Students starting with a 7 will have to work very hard to keep up, students with a 6 often flounder.

There are sixth forms and colleges that will accept students with a 6 onto A-level maths, but from many years of experience, this is not a good experience for the student. Many will drop out and switch courses early on (and therefore not appear in the results table), but some will struggle on for 2 years and then come out with a grade that really doesn't help them with university applications.

If you take A-level maths with a 6, even if you manage to complete the course (and a lot won't), about three quarters will get a D or below, with E the most common grade.

This data is from 2019 because obviously more recent data has been screwed up by covid.

If your child is keen to do maths, but gets a 6, please consider Core Maths which is designed to be taken alongside 3 A-levels and provides supportive maths content for A-level sciences and social sciences (e.g. psychology, geography).

If your child is going to do A-level maths (particularly if they are on a 7 but also 8/9), check that they have done summer bridging work so they hit the ground running in September.

D's went from a 7 to an A at A-level.

But.
He didn't work for GCSE
He has health issues so was missing a certain amount of background maths as his attendance was around 80% typically.
We have 2 people with a maths degree (me and dd1) and dh who is very up on A-level maths to help at home.
Because of that we knew that it wouldn't be beyond him.

It took a lot of work.

His maths teacher wasn't good. He didn't like her ( with a certain amount of good reason - I'd describe some of the emails I saw as the best you could say about them was they were unprofessional) so didn't put any effort in. Maths teacher screwed up his mocks. All three, ( year 12, November and February) in different ways.
He got D/E in them.

So dd1 started weekly sessions with him with homework. The first few he took with bad grace, and we wondered if there was any point. He started doing papers and going over them. By Easter, his typical score on a paper was between 15 and 30.
We wondered if this was it. There seemed to be no improvement. He didn't write enough, he'd look at questions and decide he didn't like the topic and do nothing, even though he knew how to answer the first bit.
Then start of May he jumped to scoring in the 40s. We were relieved that there was some improvement, and wondered if we'd reached his ability level.
Then about a fortnight before his first paper dd asked me if he'd done the paper in his room and maybe googled the answers. He hadn't, but had scored 62. He did three more papers that week, all scoring in the 60s. Then the next week managed a 70.
For the real paper one He scored 80!

Paper two he did less well at. His favourite subject didn't come up At all on either paper, and his least favourite came up twice.

At that point we'd done no applied. He did quite like mechanics, but the first paper he did was scored less than 20. So again we had a huge push and the week before he scored in the 40s. We concentrated on showing him how to look through the questions and pick out marks he could get. Didn't have too much hope of a good score, especially as he had a bit of a messed up week ( was performing in a large performance all days he didn't have an exam. Performances were 10-3.30 and he was tired, there were a lot of stress with various things there and I didn't think his head would be in the exam.)
He scored in the 60s for the real thing.

I had real hopes he might get a C, or even scrape a B, although I thought that was a little ambitious.

I think dd1 shrieked louder than for her results when she saw he had an A!I

But it was not easy. If he'd worked hard all the way through, then it would have been better. But if he'd been getting solid Cs then I don't thing we'd have pushed it. He was improving so rapidly when he did the exams, that I wonder if he'd had another month, then he would have been scraping an A*.

If it hasn't been for the people at home able to help he wouldn't have been able to do it. It was huge amount of work, and I was so proud of him for rising to it - and showing that work pays off.
But I wouldn't recommend it to anyone as it could have been a disaster.

Yes I appreciate that - what I was discussing in my earlier posts today is my experience today with a head of maths talking students with 7's at GCSE off doing the A level - now this may be unique to my daughter's school - but I'm concerned it might not be...

There isn’t a problem with maths A-level. In my opinion it is the correct balance between rigorous and accessible. Not everyone can succeed in maths A-level and that is ok.

Also - why are you acting like it is what the teacher believes that causes a student’s result? It is how hard the student works and how able they are for the most part that is relevant to their success.

I'm not acting like this - there is well known research out there that shows the effect of teacher expectations on outcomes. Clearly, this is not always the case but it is a real phenomenon. I'm sure as a teacher you will have heard of the The Pygmalion effect

I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing for a pupil to be aware that although they got an A equivalent at GCSE that doesn't mean that they are going to be headed for an A at A-level and that actually they are going to have to put a lot of work in.

Maths is the most popular A-level. Teachers clearly aren't doing that much work to put people off it.

True but this is not what was happening - they were being advised that it was not a good choice and would be too hard...that is not the same as saying you will need to work really hard to keep up and achieve top grades.

What is said and how it is received aren't necessarily the same thing.

I have literally no idea what point you are making. Of course I am aware of the Pymalion study, but what specific relevance is it here? What are you suggesting I should do differently in the context of maths A-level?

Are you suggesting that I should not know that GCSE maths scores and A-Level maths scores correlate? Or that I should not know the GCSE maths scores of my students? Or that students should not be given information about how hard maths A-level is and how hard they will need to work at it?

Might not apply to you but from my experience today, perhaps being a bit more positive towards students with a 7 who would like to do A level maths. Of course people want and should have access to this information discussed here but we all know there are different ways of conveying this information. Some more positive than others.

Perhaps not knowing your students GCSE score would be a good thing? I’ve often thought that myself as a teacher. I’m sure you try your best and I really don’t mean to offend but I’m just disappointed at what I saw today - when they should have been elated at getting a 7. I appreciate this may not be typical of maths departments.

Even more important that teachers are careful when they communicate with students.

We accept them with a 6 at my school.... and the conversations I've had with upset kids and frustrated parents whose kids are trapped on a course that is totally unsuitable for them. 'I wish you'd have told us from the start that they weren't likely to get a good grade, we'd have picked something else' - applying for uni with BBE after working your arse off to get that E doesn't give many options.

Perhaps you'd prefer to have the tearful kid and the poor grade conversation than some upfront honesty.

But it fucking sucks.

Ive followed this from the start and completely agree how big a jump it is from GCSE to A level. Ds has always been good at maths, but struggled with the accuracy needed in his GCSEs and came out with a mid 8. Definitely no blood, sweat and tears to get that 8 though. So many of his peers have struggled at A level. I would say especially those who put in a huge amount of effort to get their 8 or 9 at GCSE. So that’s what I would look at. Ds got an A star at A level. Very happy because he didn’t do Further Maths because he didn’t think he was good enough

We are not actually accepting anyone onto maths A-level this year if they don’t have a grade 8 or 9. So for us it is not really a question of positive or negative to them, it is more telling them that they have not met the admission requirements. This though is not a surprise to them - I told my GCSE class last year regularly that if they wanted to do A-level they would need a grade 8.

We are a grammar school and well over 100 students take maths A-level each year. Whether we are correct to have the grade 8 cut off is a tricky question - in our experience it makes kids really push themselves at GCSE to try to get the grade 8 and this makes them better prepared for A-level. It also weeds out some who are going to really struggle. We also have less teaching time allocated to A-level then the majority of schools (less teaching time means harder to support someone with weak algebra).

In terms of positive, once anyone is on the course I am extremely positive with them. But before someone begins the course or if someone is wobbling during the first couple of weeks, I am completely honest with them. I actually think being honest is best: it would be irresponsible to tell them that maths A-level is something that it isn’t.

I don’t think you were being serious about us not knowing what scores our students get in tests as teachers. Knowing someone’s GCSE result in maths helps us know how much support they will need! This is really important for a teacher to know.

Completely agree that “how they got their result” is also important when it comes to deciding if they are suitable for maths A-level.

I would prefer you to be honest to me as a parent. My daughter wanted to do Economics as she met the minimum requirement but school influenced her into taking the L3 BTEC Business Studies root of which she flew through and her final mark last week was a distinction. Obviously some unis prefer A levels but there probably no unis that are right for her.

A mum I was talking to this morning in my gym class was telling me her son was a few marks off a 6 in Physics GCSE so they have appealed for him to do the A Level. I would hope there school would manage her expectations on this.

It sounds like your DD had good advice; hopefully the lad you mention will get some too.

Of course there’s a problem with the alternatives to A levels being insufficiently understood and valued. In the opening post, noblegiraffe asked people to consider Core Maths. I assume this earns some UCAS points but does it ever figure on university grade requirements/‘desirables’ alongside A levels? I don’t know what it includes but from the brief description in the OP it sounds like it might cover most of the maths many students could benefit from in their future studies and careers.

I think its this https://amsp.org.uk/employers/understanding-maths-qualifications/level-3-core-maths/ and google says the same points as an AS Level.

I assume it would support an application for some courses like a computing degree which requires a certain level of maths but not much maths as a computer science degree. I have a computing degree and the amount of maths was around this level in the first year. But that said I haven't heard of this before.

I did a course looking at core maths. It’s a great course if you are planning to study the other sciences, geography, psychology or economics/ business studies as covers the maths needed for these subjects. As far as I’m aware, they are not many schools offering it yet which is a shame. I am trying to persuade my school to start it up but we don’t have the staffing to do an extra subject in the maths department. I’m not a maths teacher but teach a subject that would benefit from students continuing with studying maths!
I agree with only taking A level maths if you get a 7! It’s one of those subjects where it doesn’t matter how hard you work, if you don’t get it, you may never get it. Same goes for chemistry and physics. If you needed a tutor to get a 7, you are going to struggle to get a grade at A level.

My ds a funny one. He slipped from his maths gcse prediction of 9 to an 8 ( 2 marks off 9) but got a high 9 in further maths.
He is thinking about maths at A level though been accepted at sixth form for other subjects. He said not to ask for a paper check as had worked out after the exam some silly, basic, mistakes.

The grade boundary for a 9 at Edexcel this year was insanely high - 90%, and 20 marks higher than the previous year. This means that you could, unlike previous years, lose a grade 9 through mainly silly mistakes rather than lack of understanding of the content.

Someone who got a high 9 in further maths should definitely be considering A-level maths - the further maths content overlaps with A-level and he's clearly capable of it!

Anyone got experience of a maths paper remark? Edexel 2 marks off a 9.
not sure if it’s something that’s either done or worth it ?

Apologies I realise this isn’t thread topic. Just fitted with the comment about the Edexel boundary this year

Maths marking doesn't tend to move much, more likely one mark than two.

It would be really expensive to put in all three papers for a review too - what you want ideally is for a maths teacher to look over them and see if they can find any obvious marking errors, then only put that paper in.

I've looked at papers before where a kid would gain an extra mark on one question but then lose it on another which isn't a problem if they are on different papers as you only put the good paper in, but really annoying if they are on the same paper and cancel each other out!

I think lots of parents who or families who had Maths in mind as an A Level really struggle with the idea a 6 isn’t good enough and a 7 should think v carefully about it as is likely to be inline for a mid/low grade if they do it.

Lots seem to think a 5/6 is a good grade to set you up well for A Level. In most subjects at its a borderline A Level/Btec course. It’s not suitable for Maths. And it’s not about working hard …that’s what people don’t grasp. They can’t see how a hardworking 7 can’t make it to an A or A star but the stats show their outcomes are poor. As an earlier poster says, they see demoralised students stuck on a course they struggle with an ending up with BBE grades which make good unis tricky. They might have accessed another B or C in another subject.
Lits of schools insist on an 8, especially selective schools where students want to aim for RG uni.
in the end, perhaps people need to be told v baldly that for lots of students, if they go for Maths their likely grade will mean a lesser uni. But schools and colleges don’t like to say this as it’s all about funding and bums on seats and the fact that the very odd one occasionally does well from a 7 starting point and lots of parents are simply a bit deluded about their children.

Ask to view the papers.

We've had two remarked, GCSE statistics, 3 marks off next grade and Further maths A-level, 2 marks off next grade.

In both cases dd looked at the papers and identified on one of them marks missing. In one case they'd missed marking part of a question, and other they'd marked it, but it was over the page and when they'd added the marks up, clearly forgotten those two.

Both went up.

We wouldn't have put it in for remark if we hadn't seen the marks though.