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?

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I think we expect the first few questions not to take much thinking, or time. Later questions, generally, would be increasingly difficult and take longer. That’s reflected in the mark scheme.

It’s way back, so may not still be true, but at one stage the first questions would be set at the lowest level available for that paper, so 1 for Foundation and 4 for Higher. (I think)

Still like that. But you'll be surprised how many get those things asked questions wrong as they rush. And I was counting in that time !

The Maths papers were HARD this year. Dd and all of cohort found them harder than any previous past papers.

@Beaa82 yes grade boundaries was 12 marks lower for a 9 this year (Edexcel) so the papers were harder.

My daughter did OCR. I dont think her school did well in Maths as a whole. I heard Edexcel was very hard too. Dd got a grade lower than usual.

Why did they do away with the intermediate paper out of interest? It’s the one I did in 1994 and the max grade I could get was a B which I achieved. Seems a shame not to let children try to achieve a 7.

The higher maths paper is HARD. Saying that DS dropped only 22 marks in his papers getting a high 9. So proud!

Great result @CoolFans . Mine was chuffed to get a decent 8 as she was very unsure after the non calc paper that she'd make it. And wants to do A level.

The real questions posted seem pretty tough to me! (Not the made up ones.) I took Maths O level in 1977 and got a B (good result for me, it wouldn't have taken too much to pull me down to a C, and there was never any realistic chance I would get an A). Then I gave up Maths with a sigh of relief. I was good at arithmetic and not too bad at algebra, but geometry beyond the very basics, calculus and trigonometry were tough. For some reason I really struggled with graphs and there was always a graph question, so that reduced the pool of questions I could choose from.

Anyway, for what it's worth the only question I can remember from the papers we took (I think there were two) was an easy one at the beginning - something like if you bought a sheet of 64 stamps of such and such a value and paid with a £5 note, how much change would you get? So easy questions have always been there as a way of ensuring most kids will get at least some marks and to give the nervous candidates some confidence that they really will be able to cope with at least some of the questions. (Mind you, this was before the days when calculators were allowed in exams, so you either had to be good and reasonably quick at mental arithmetic or write the sum out on the rough paper.)

Well done to today's 16-year-olds for coping with all of this. I take my hat off to them.

ETA: we had log tables in the exam! I'd forgotten that. I think some of the real maths whizzes in my year had slide rules instead. Forgotten skills now.

I'm going to boast now as I'm a really proud my but my ds got 197/200 for his Maths exam and a grade 9.

He did further maths and 'only' got an 8 - he said that was really really hard!!

I'm really proud as I recall being called into school when he was in year 2 and basically being told he was thick and way behind the other children.

Well done to him.
You deserve to be very proud

Wwll it seems I may be wrong about how grade boundaries are set, and so might the Education Secretary: https://schoolsweek.co.uk/powell-criticised-for-claim-one-in-three-cant-pass-gcse-english-and-maths/

It's not exactly transparent.