How much extra work is GCSE Further Maths in Year 11? (if doing the whole course in one year)

[LondonHOPDad]

Hello

My DC is in Y10, doing well at Maths so far (he has always been storng in Maths). They have said he should do Further Maths GCSE next year - I believe this will be done as an after school club.

How much extra work would it be? He finds Maths GCSE fairly easy so far and doesn't really revise for Y10 Maths mocks exams for example, but I suspect won't be that keen to stay late.

He will have 10 other GCSEs next year so just trying to understand how much additional workload it will be. He thinks he will do Maths A-Level if that makes a difference (I have read it can help but isn't essential).

Thank you.

My son is currently taking his GCSEs and is doing further maths (having completed the course in yr11 in an after school club). He’s managed fine. I haven’t noticed him having much extra work because of it and, like your son, finds maths relatively easy and didn’t do much revision for mocks (lazy toad!). He is also planning to do maths A-level.

If your son is up for it I’d say go for it. It’s good to see them challenged if they find a lot of their school work quite manageable normally. My son has enjoyed it and I think would recommend it.

My son has done it and not found it much extra work. It’s been one after school session per week in year 11, and he’s missed a fair few of those due to other stuff going on. He’s still in year 11 so yet to do the exams (they are after half term) or to see what grade he’ll get, but he’s really enjoyed going a bit deeper and feels it will help him hit the ground running with A level maths. Def recommend if your child really enjoys maths like mine has.

It was Additional Maths at ds’s school. They took their maths GCSE in summer of year 10 and the rest in November of year 11 and then covered the additional maths course in lessons from November - May of year 11. It all seemed very manageable.

Mine also both did it alongside a lot of other GCSEs - they covered most of it in lessons, going faster than the other sets. They didn’t find it much more work - just more exams really.

Basically not much more workload, but he’d have to be up for the extra classes. Not sure on how useful it is for a level - probably it is, but mine went on to do maths and further maths a levels too so was steaming through the content at high speed, the advantage didn’t last long!

If he’s going on to do maths then probably the more maths the better, if he’s up for it.

It’s not normally a lot of extra work.

a common model is one session a week, sometimes before or after school. There’s usually homework.
it’s often offered to top set only.

kids are usually free to drop out at any time until exam entry in Feb or so and at my school a few do.
so he can start it and see how it goes.

the topics are generally very similar to gcse just harder so it often helps improve the gcse grade aswell,

It’s a piece of cake if your kid is maths oriented. My DD did it alongside her normal maths, in the lesson, and didn’t notice any extra work.

If he is strong at maths and likely to take A-level maths, I’d probably let him try it, but treat it as a trial. Ask the school how many sessions per week, expected homework, exam entry deadline, and whether he can drop before entry if the other GCSE workload is too much. The useful test is whether he enjoys the harder problems.

My daughter did it and the extra work wasn’t huge, it was easy to accommodate and she enjoyed it. It’s important they enjoy it or it will become a slog.

My son did it for one hour a week in year 11, found it easy and got a 9 in GCSE.

Thanks everyone, this is really useful. Seems fairly universal feedback that it's not too much extra work if Maths is fairly easy at the moment.

As some have said, I guess the test is if he enjoys it - worse case scenario we drop it before exam entry though sounds like it will help main Maths GCSE as well, and maybe give an small indication if A-Level Maths is for him.

Every school has a different model for how they run it, and it will depend on all sorts of things such as how soon the top set as a whole will complete the GCSE syllabus, whether the whole top set does it or just a few, whether they only let the people who will sail through it, or a larger number, whether they are able to let people start it and then drop it (less easy if the whole class is doing it), etc. I don't think most sixth forms/universities read much into the grades, either, because they know that in some cases it is being done in an hour a week after school, or even just a lunch hour. I put one kid through it who did it largely on self-study in a classroom where most people were aiming for Cs, plus an hour a week with a university student volunteer (low-achieving school, they'd come into year 11 from overseas and had already done more than GCSE).