New maths and further maths A Levels

It is worth pointing out that English students in Y5 perform well in TIMSS so it appears that the issue starts in secondary rather than primary education

We did matrices, groups and modular arithmetic under SMP before I left middle school at age 13!

It is worth pointing out that English students in Y5 perform well in TIMSS so it appears that the issue starts in secondary rather than primary education

Ah, I was obviously behind target, I didn't teach them until Year 9.

I always liked the group of 2,4,6,8 under multiplication mod 10.

Mind you, 2-D transformations and matrices went beyond the current FP1 specification, since we had shears parallel to the axes.

A friend of mine sheared a sheep in one of our early O level lessons at high school when we were about 14 - he drew a picture of a sheep on graph paper and applied a shear to it! This is the sort of fun element that seems sadly lacking from GCSE now.

But we already have these

I do Level 2 FM with the top set (about 8%) but mainly because it develops their ability to use what they are learning (with a few additional topics)

It would be far better to have the top 25-33% confident users of the GCSE syllabus rather than worry about adding much more - 6 units of maths that is currently A Level

Spent the better part of the last half an hour reading up on this

I'm happy for the changes (and know the person who pushed for decision to be removed for the reasons mentioned). I think it will get students to really think a bit more and remove the whole "route learning" element to A Level maths (and FM to an extent). In addition, I think it will allow for some more creativity. I remember back in school when I approached a problem if my teacher didn't know the method they literally would tell me it's wrong and do the method in the book. This new system could eliminate that. In addition, with the removal of January exams I think this would work much better. It will allow ideas to develop and connect better and avoid having students with 9+ exams.

Some people are complaining about the removal of additional further maths. I don't think it's a bad thing as long as this curriculum really has this further material enriched into it and thank god for centralising exam boards! Having students saying that they want to take Edexcel because it's the "easy" exam board can make teaching sessions a pain sometimes

So it would be an extended form of that with much more AS content. At the moment, isn't it a bit sidelined as it's often taught in Y11 in 60 or so hours? For top pupils, who are bored of quadratics and loci and even completing the square no matter how many applications and contexts are brought in, shouldn't something like this form the basis of their curriculum?


Even if students in the top quartile walked out with an E, it would surely be respected as it would suggest they could have got a C minimum later on; for those attaining Bs/As, it would suggest they could perform higher than the current A/A*: such stretching is incredibly important to prevent stagnation of progress.

thanks for that interesting post. could you say what will be the implications for the MEI board ? are they likely to survive as a separate provider ?

From reading this report, I suspect not however we just have to wait and see

MEI's income is not dependent on A Level mathematics (and there is no reason to believe they won't be a big player for the new A Level anyway). They are contracted to run the Further Maths Support Group and raked in a tidy few million for developing Gower's ideas into the Critical Maths element of the new Core Maths qualification. You don't need to fear for their future!

Well I think "our" Middle School was ahead of the other feeder Middle School by quite a way I seem to remember when we moved up to High School (we were obviously in the posher area of town!!)

A friend of mine sheared a sheep in one of our early O level lessons at high school when we were about 14 - he drew a picture of a sheep on graph paper and applied a shear to it! This is the sort of fun element that seems sadly lacking from GCSE now.

I'd recommend something like this for the sciences to help redress this. If you want to do Biology or Psychology to AS, you must do Maths to AS or above, for A2, you must do Maths A2. For Chemistry AS, you must do Maths A2, for Chemistry A2, AS FM as well. For Physics AS, you must do the same as for Chemistry A2, for Physics A2, you must do A2 FM. This would also mean imposing high levels of Maths in Physics wouldn't appear as harsh due to high Maths requirements for even the 'softer' sciences.

MEI's income is not dependent on A Level mathematics (and there is no reason to believe they won't be a big player for the new A Level anyway). They are contracted to run the Further Maths Support Programme and raked in a tidy few million for developing Gower's ideas into the Critical Maths element of the new Core Maths qualification. You don't need to fear for their future!

In 2013 4.9% of students achieved an A* in GCSE maths with a further 9.4% achieving a grade A

This means that 95%+ of the cohort understood less than 80% of the current GCSE and 86% understood less than 2/3 of the content

They need better teaching of the basics before we look at increasing the content dramatically

My lessons were always quite good like that, but the Maths was no way near that level, even at age 16! The units I suggested cover really all the areas that used to be covered: basic calculus, stats/mech, complex numbers, matrices etc, so if a modest percentage of young students in the pass could do it, why only a miniscule number now?

I would really love for the algebraic/formulaic basis to Physics to go: differential equations for decay scenarios, integration for graph areas, I mean M3 covers kinematics and simple harmonic motion much more thoroughly, and not just mathematically, than the A2 Physics course. What's going on???

I'd recommend something like this for the sciences to help redress this. If you want to do Biology or Psychology to AS, you must do Maths to AS or above, for A2, you must do Maths A2. For Chemistry AS, you must do Maths A2, for Chemistry A2, AS FM as well. For Physics AS, you must do the same as for Chemistry A2, for Physics A2, you must do A2 FM. This would also mean imposing high levels of Maths in Physics wouldn't appear as harsh due to high Maths requirements for even the 'softer' sciences.

Good plan if you are hoping to increase the numbers studying humanities and the arts.

Whilst I like this idea, you run into the problem of having schools suffering from logistic issues especially with the idea of FM. I went to a school were I was the first person to take the full A Level of FM (mostly self taught) and the demand isn't too great. In addition, you find that there's only so much theory that you can do without avoiding maths. Take physics for example. You get to university level and you find that a lot of students struggle with the maths element of the course and it's because they did everything they could to avoid the "manipulation" element of the course. Plus it shows that you know how to apply your maths well

We need to fully invest in this area imo and create an urgent action plan. To counter drifts to the humanities/arts as Mr M suggests, maybe we could have halved fees for STEM courses. Sad that it agains comes down to financial incentive, but it could be an efficient safeguard.