Largest ever up-tick in GCSE maths standards?

[soon2bfree]

The Government says thousands more students have achieved high GCSE maths grades this year:
www.gov.uk/government/news/maths-excellence-as-thousands-achieve-high-grades-at-gcse

My understanding is that grade boundaries are set each year to ensure that a similar proportion of students fall into each grade - a measure brought in to counter accusations of grade inflation.

If that's the case, surely the extra few thousand students achieving top grades only reflects the greater number of students sitting the test in this cohort - a cohort that is at/near the peak of a mini population boom?

If so, did a greater number achieved the lowest grades too?

Surely no matter how great the country's students are at maths, the same proportion will always fail because the bar to a pass will just get higher?

Yes,

I feel similar about the reporting around the failure percentages. IF grade boundaries are adjusted according to a normal distribution, surely it is expected that the proportion of students who pass/fail remain broadly similar YoY?

It's due to questions like "Ahmed has 5 bananas, and he eats on and gives one to Aisha, how many bananas does he have left?" - 4 marks

Surely it depends? If people get the same exact marks they can hardly put one higher than the other. So there has to be a line where X number is a 7 and sometimes so many kids got the same exact marks that they all got a 7

I assume you don't have children who are doing GCSE Maths?

DH and I both agree that some topics they are tackling are things that weren't done until A level when we were at school in the 90s.

Have you seen a maths GCSE paper recently? This is typical question. Stop belittling young people, every single 16 yo I know works a lot harder than anyone I was at school with ever did.

I find it hard to believe that the kids vaping and doing wheelies in our local bus station are learning calculus.

And this is why grade boundaries changing confuses me (easily done!). How can the number achieving a pass in GCSE maths increase, as we would surely want it to so we have a county of competent mathematicians, if when they do better they just move the grade boundaries?
I know someone will come along and explain it, but it does seem odd that we would never be in the situation where if all the kids taking the GCSE had the knowledge and understanding to pass, some still wouldn’t.

In case the image does not appear here is a link: https://www.reddit.com/r/GCSE/comments/148mv3f/a_good_maths_question_to_attempt_if_youre_aiming/#lightbox

and yet they are
A lot of the most brilliant minds on earth have been wildly experimental with drugs - you have a very limited world view point

No it’s really not. What makes you think it is?

Exams have been dumbed down continuously since the 60s. I assumed that was about the level GCSE maths had reached.

@dustabsorber this is not true, the most recent changes made under Michael Gove have massively raised standards and made the exams significantly more challenging than they have been since O Level. You're views are 10 years out of date.

From an actual paper.

1. Find the square root of 64

Ryan buys 4 cakes at £1.30 each 2 identical tins of soup.

Ryan pays with a £10 note. He gets £1.80 change. How much does Ryan pay for each tin of soup?

Back in the day, you would send an 8-year-old to the shops with a half crown to buy cakes at 4 1/2 D each and 2 tins of soup at 6d ea and expect them to check the change from the shopkeeper.

There are two sets of papers, Foundation and Higher.

I don’t know what a Foundation paper looks like, but know it starts with easy questions and the difficulty increases. From something I saw yesterday I think the highest possible grade you can get on that is a 5.

There are no questions as easy as the ones above at the Higher tier.

The foundation maths is easy and I presume that is where those examples.are from.

The higher tier is seriously hard.

I think they have much better way of learning now and can watch videos for demonstrations rather than trying to read a text book and figure what it means

They are from the foundation paper tbh.

Of you go @dustabsorber. show us how easy it is

That's a foundation question so should be easy for you. This is higher.

2b
b - a
-a - b

V good, you have managed a level 5 question. Meant for students who struggle with maths. Now try the next one as GCSEs are so easy

Oh look DPD have turned up with my parcel and the builder needs another bucket of water. I will be back for question 2 later.

Here’s a link to some past papers. F for foundation and H for Higher.

Looking at the first higher paper, in 2019

q2 (so, the easy end of the paper)
(I didn’t choose q1 because the diagram didn’t copy over)
“The length of a pencil is 128 mm correct to the nearest millimetre.
Complete the error interval for the length of the pencil.”

q6

The nth term of a sequence is 2n^2
The nth term of a different sequence is 40 - n^2
Show that there is only one number that is in both of these

(n^2 = n squared, the formatting didn’t copy over)

The last question, q25, (no diagram given)

The straight line L has equation 3x + 2y = 17
The point A has coordinates (0, 2)
The straight line M is perpendicular to L and passes through A.
Line L crosses the y-axis at the point B.
Lines L and M intersect at the point C.
Work out the area of triangle ABC.
You must show all your working.

edit: I typed these while mumsneedwine was posting so hadn’t seen her examples.

I don't see what is wrong with that question, it's from a foundation paper, I had to write it down, as my mental maths is a bit rusty. Remember nearly all children sit GSCE maths ( at foundation or higher) if a child is operating at the bottom end do you want them not to be able to answer any questions at all?
The old O level was not taken by lower ability children, they did CSE instead

The old O level was not taken by lower ability children, they did CSE instead

Good point. Or, possibly, RSA Arithmetic.