Schools that traditionally have larger numbers of pupils already studying maths post-16 have taken the bulk of cash under a government initiative aimed at boosting take-up, analysis shows.
Nick Gibb, the schools minister, said in 2018 the advanced maths premium (AMP) would “open up the opportunity” for more young people to study the subject.
A total of £56.7 million has been paid out in the past four years. But 86 per cent has gone to schools and just 14 per cent to colleges, which provide about about 25 per cent of level 3 maths entries.
Maths remains the most popular group of subjects at A-level, with just shy of 90,000 entries this summer.
Eddie Playfair, the senior policy manager at the Association of Colleges, said: “The AMP has played out in a very lopsided way and probably hasn’t done what it set out to do, which was to incentivise growth.
“It’s a bit of a paradox to be incentivising something that is already very popular.”
The premium is paid to providers for the numbers of students studying level 3 maths courses – AS-levels, A-levels or core maths – above a baseline figure.
To date, the baseline has been calculated as an average of level 3 maths learners in 2015-16 and 2017-18 academic years, with the payment made to institutions at £600 per student above that figure.
One academy gets £280k funding
Analysis by Playfair found the biggest beneficiary was Brampton Manor Academy in London with £280,800 allocated for 2022-23.
Brampton is a highly-selective sixth form dubbed the “East End Eton” for the number of its students who go on to study at the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge.
The second largest beneficiary was Hereford Sixth Form College, with just over £250,000.
But the analysis found a number of general further education colleges and sixth-form colleges with high numbers of maths students – more than 350 – failed to get a penny.
They included Peter Symonds College in Winchester with more than 600 maths entries, as well as Runshaw College, Lancashire, and Exeter College that each had about 500.
The premium rules mean funding rewarded those that had escalated their maths student numbers on the baseline, rather than those with consistently high numbers of level 3 maths learners, Playfair said.
“Colleges have told us it hasn’t changed their behaviours, so the fact there is an advanced maths premium hasn’t made them promote maths any more than they already do.
“The big beneficiaries have been newer and more selective school providers that are growing, rather than those who already had high numbers and are keeping them up,” he tweeted.
Funding ‘instrumental’ says sixth form college
But Ed Senior, the principal of Worcester Sixth Form College, which received more than £178,000 for 2022-23, said the premium had been instrumental in boosting level 3 maths.
And Peter Cooper, the chief executive of the Heart of Mercia Trust that runs Hereford and Worcester sixth form colleges, said the funding had allowed it to encourage the take-up of core maths, believing it helped achievement in other subjects.
But from 2023-24, the baseline funding will be calculated on an average of the 2019-20 and 2020-21 data, which means the pay-outs will likely be smaller.
“The adjustment to a new baseline means we will get no money at all for doing the course in the future. This now perversely forces us to do less of it as we would have to take the money from other areas.
“A prime example of central bureaucratic incompetence in implementing a worthy aim,” Cooper said.
The DfE’s advanced maths premium guidance says that its processes will ensure “only genuine increases in level 3 maths participation attract the premium,” saying it will “monitor behaviour at institution level to indicate adverse behaviour and may follow up where data gives us cause for concern”.
Core maths qualifications were announced in December 2014 as a means of aiding progression in maths post-16 for students who did not want to study maths at A-level.
In 2022 there were 12,311 entries – the highest number since the first exams in 2016 when just under 3,000 entries were reported.
Playfair said that “at the very least it would have been better to spend this money on volumes,” as it would reward providers for consistently delivering A-level maths.
The DfE has been approached for comment.
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