maths | Schools Week

“Dare we hope the new post-16 maths course will change pupils’ minds about the subject?”

The Channel 4 series Educating Cardiff is a brilliant portrait of school life and, along with its predecessors set in Essex and Yorkshire, it is doing much to shine a light on secondary education in modern Britain. In one particularly telling moment in the current series, a pupil sums up the mood of generations of […]

Maths GCSE results 2015

A-level results 2015: Mathematics

‘We were not prepared to accept the status quo’

Should we make the GCSE pass rate harder? In response to Mark Dawes The new GCSEs will be challenging. But schools are in an excellent position to deliver qualifications that at last will prepare students to succeed in a demanding economy In September, schools will begin teaching the new maths and English GCSEs to year […]

With GCSE resits vanishing, are functional skills qualifications a better alternative?

When learners are no longer offered the luxury of resits in English and maths, are functional skills qualifications a better alternative for some? Charlotte Bosworth explains her view. A recent report by the Education and Training Foundation: Making maths and English work for all, described how the traditional learning approach leading to GCSEs can, for […]

Sacking leaders over times tables defies employment law – and common sense

Let’s get something clear from the start: children should learn times tables at primary school. They should have them thoroughly memorised so that they can spend their mental energy on problem solving; there is absolutely no contradiction between memorisation and creativity. Moreover, this process is not always going to be fun and there is hard […]

Are we really ready for the new, ‘more rigorous’ Maths GCSE?

The principles underlying the changes to GCSE maths are sound. But the practicalities are less so. For a start, where will all the extra teachers come from? When Michael Gove announced last November that maths GCSE was going to get tougher, I doubt many of us realised just how tough. From September, it will almost […]