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?

To add to my example, students got 90 minutes to answer 25 questions, so 3.6 minutes per question on average, (using the mean).

I think that the government actually means that a greater percentage of pupils performed at grade 7+ this year, not merely a number of pupils.

The national reference tests showed an improved performance in the year group at the higher end. It's still not as high as 2020 (NOTE this is not due to covid grading but a genuine peak in performance as pupils sat the NRT in March before schools closed for covid). Performance then went down after schools closed and is now improving again, but only at the top end. 4+ and 5+ levels have been pretty stable.

Link to National Reference Test data
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/the-national-reference-test-in-2026/national-reference-test-results-digest-2026-accessible

If I was doing it, I would answer the questions I could do as fast as I could leaving me more time for the harder ones. I am old, I am sure a mentally alert 15-year-old could tip through the higher paper.

I think you need to do the Maths. How many year 11 students are hanging out at bus stations vs how many are attending local schools. You would probably find they aren't year 11s and if they are its about 4

q6. Should it read The nth term of a sequence is 2n^2 + 1?

Are you looking at the first few questions on a foundation paper?

Look at the higher paper, as they are the only ones that can get 9,8,7,6 grades and look past the first few questions.

Back in what day? The day you've made up in your head?

Q6.
2n2 = 40 - m2
2n2 + m2 = 40
let n = 1, you don't get a square for m^2, 38
let n= 2; you don't get a square for m^2, 32
let n = 3, you don't get a square for m^2, 22
let n = 4, you don't get a square for m^2, 8
let n= 5 or more negative result and m^2 can't be negative

I think the question is wrong

Proof by exhaustion.

In the 60s, my Mum would send us to the shop at the bottom of the road to buy bits. This was in the pre-decimal days. Kids were expected to be able to do pounds, shillings and pence sums in their head. After she saw the owners dog "George" piss on the potato sack, we didn't shop there any more, and the next shop was too far away to send children to.

A young relative got 100% in his Maths GCSE this year. I wonder how many students achieve this.

Just to be clear, numbers passing or achieving particular grades are no longer pre-set. That’s known as norm referencing (ie. the top 10% will always get an A etc) and stopped in 1988 (I think) when they moved from O levels to GCSEs. GCSEs are criterion referenced (ie. everyone who gets this many marks will get an A). So the numbers passing/getting top grades will vary from year to year.

Realistically in practice the marking teams will use a combination of norm and criterion referencing and should be alert to the fact that one year’s paper may be particularly challenging/easy.

Brilliant. Congratulations to him. Will he get a prize?

He always wins the Maths prize at school. I am not sure if he gets one from the exam board?
Now he will aim to get 100% in A level Maths and Further Maths.
A very talented lad, he got straight 9s in all his subjects. He has a great future ahead doesn’t he?

See screenshots (when they load) of the question and the mark scheme (with solution) for that question.
The link in my original post takes you to more examples. This is 2019H paper 2.

I would also have expected some comment about one sequence increasing and the other one decreasing (however expressed) to confirm that there’s only one solution.

I seem to have found a glitch in the MN system.
My first reply to yours was that the question is 2 n^2 - 1

I replied again to the same post with the screenshots, and that’s deleted my first reply. I think. (working on a small screen)

@dustabsorber question is not wrong 😂

Firstly, plenty of kids couldn't do this.
Secondly, that's one small section of maths. It doesn't mean those kids could do the full curriculum.

It is one thing to do the bits of maths we use in everyday life. The kids doing the higher GCSE paper are doing things that really don't crop up in their lives.

This is total bullshit.

When did you last look at a paper?

The resources for kids these days are phenomenal. If you want to support your kids and you have the £60 for an Ed tech subscription, you have access to every paper, every mark scheme… nothing like that existed when we were kids

Not sure I want to tell you this but they are all available for free. Just google the exam board and past papers. All there either mark schemes and examiners reports. Free.

I copied 2n^2
Dustabsorber thought it might be 2n^2 + 1 (13:17)

My first, disappeared, one said it was 2n^2 - 1. (posted before 13:30, I think, but probably while dustabsorber was writing her solution so they didn’t see it before they posted)

🤣

I can live with that. We used Save My Exams and the revision notes and additional resources were worth the £60 even if I had known all of that!

PS @dustabsorber this is one question so would have about 5 minutes to answer it (unless you wanted to leave others blank).