NationStates Jolt Archive

BBC: 'Split' over A-level maths reform

Reforms to make A-level maths more popular have split teachers' opinion, the government's exam watchdog says. Many teachers believed the changes have "dumbed down" the exam, an interim report by the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority (QCA) found.

Its report also identified a "clever core" of students who were dominating the subject in the sixth-form.

Meanwhile others saw the reduction in content as a "positive move in terms of helping all students to succeed", the report said.

It said one group viewed moves to make the subject "more accessible" as an "unacceptable 'dumbing down' of A-level mathematics" which made it "something that makes it unattractive to their very able students".

The report concluded there is not likely to be a "middle way" between stretching the most academic pupils and attracting less able ones.

But it added it was the less able students who must "most be appealed to" if the A-level is to "significantly" increase its participation and achievement rates.

Boys were more likely to value it as a useful A-level subject and girls to be concerned whether they could cope, researchers said.

More at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/4682548.stm

What bullshit. It's not about "helping all students to succeed" (mummy, we had an Everyone Wins day at school today!) :rolleyes: It's about making sure the country has a sufficient supply of people with certain abilities. Too bad if most other people can't cut it, it's not about them. You simply can't lower the bar to raise children's self-esteem, without compromising the whole point of the exercise. Why do people have such a problem with the concept of failure? :confused:

At my college one third of the people study maths, personally I'm studying double maths and it certainly isn't easy.

I still hate Mathematics.

That article is the most rediculous thing since a mate of mine said "meadia studies IS real subject!!!"

exams aren't supposed to be about failure or catching out the 'dumb kids', but about setting a standard through which students can assertain ability in the subject. self-worth also comes into this in a big way, on a psychological front.

i say making an exam or sillabus too hard that only a very few students can - yet alone want - to take the subject at this level just negates the other students who may have mathematical ability, but because they weren't good enough for the 'hard' a-level they either lose interest in the subject, lose self-worth, or do not have a qualification that meets their ability. nationwide, you just end up with a lack of mathematicians or people qualified in maths, or taking up maths-related degrees (like physics), so its in your scientific best interests to get as many people into maths as possible rather than just sticking rigedly to high standards which only an elite percent can attain.


what would make sense, to me, is to further distance the maths and 'further maths' a-levels, making the further maths perhaps a little harder than it is now (so that "clever core" can still succeed and shine on their own) and dumb down normal maths to include more students and give them the qualification they deserve. trying to fit everyone through one hoop is kind of silly when there is such variation in ability, as is such with a subject like maths - you either have it, have the logical mind to be able to do it (and variation therein), or not.
perhaps making the AS sillabus totally different if you're just doing 1 year of it would be a good idea, rather than just being half the full A-level sillabus.


personally, i hate maths. i had a series of shit teachers at GCSE, ended up with a B somehow, and still don't know my times-tables. my apparent inabillity to do maths ended up really disbenefiting me at uni when studying economics (got 14% in the econometrics end of year exams lol), but i don't think i'm stupid: just crap at maths (dyslexia has always seemed to play an issue there, or at least thats what the insitute said).

That article is the most rediculous thing since a mate of mine said "meadia studies IS real subject!!!"

I guess maths is going the same way as English :rolleyes:

exams aren't supposed to be about failure or catching out the 'dumb kids', but about setting a standard through which students can assertain ability in the subject. self-worth also comes into this in a big way, on a psychological front.

i say making an exam or sillabus too hard that only a very few students can - yet alone want - to take the subject at this level just negates the other students who may have mathematical ability, but because they weren't good enough for the 'hard' a-level they either lose interest in the subject, lose self-worth, or do not have a qualification that meets their ability. nationwide, you just end up with a lack of mathematicians or people qualified in maths, or taking up maths-related degrees (like physics), so its in your scientific best interests to get as many people into maths as possible rather than just sticking rigedly to high standards which only an elite percent can attain.

Exams are assessments of ability. After grading thousands and writing several dozen, I'm convinced that they can never be perfect. When I say perfect, I mean that the exam can never be so well representative of the material that is taught and the expectations of the teacher that a straight 100/90/80/70 percent grade scale can capture the ability of the class that is taking it. My exams were always curved. I didn't always fit the average grade to the median score, though.

Some of my colleagues reveled in the fact that the average score on their exams was in the 20s or 30s. I've taken exams like that and I don't think they prove much except that the prof is out of touch with the syllabus.

I think the problem in lower grades, and I'm not familiar with "forms", is that some teachers are afraid of the material, themselves. If they don't know alternate ways to prove a simple theorem, or illustrate an example, they they aren't going to be able to make the slow student understand. When it comes to math, nothing taught in grades lower than college is hard. It just takes a little understanding and a lot of practice. Where schools in the US fall short, I think, is in imparting the initial understanding. We certainly test enough.

When it comes to math, nothing taught in grades lower than college is hard. It just takes a little understanding and a lot of practice. Where schools in the US fall short, I think, is in imparting the initial understanding. We certainly test enough.
If anything, we overtest. My daughter is in high school and it seems like she's taking a standardized test every two months or so, and that's not including the college prep exams she's beginning and that she'll have to take next year. The pressure on schools to ensure that their students meet some farcical standard (and trust me, on the language side, farcical is the word for it--I have to undo the damage with my college students) set by NCLB is so great that teachers spend little time doing anything but teaching the next test. Students lack critical thinking and reasoning skills as a result.

My exams were always curved. I didn't always fit the average grade to the median score, though.

Exams in the UK are graded on the curve :)


I think the problem in lower grades, and I'm not familiar with "forms"...

Forms, in the original poster's sense, does not refer to grade. In that case it just refers to the school year. The 2 years leading up to A-Level are the 6th forms (upper and lower 6th).

nationwide, you just end up with a lack of mathematicians or people qualified in maths, or taking up maths-related degrees (like physics), so its in your scientific best interests to get as many people into maths as possible rather than just sticking rigedly to high standards which only an elite percent can attain.
I disagree. It's about quality, not quantity. You need that elite, not a whole load of people who did the subject to a mediocre level and then let it atrophy away.

If anything, we overtest. My daughter is in high school and it seems like she's taking a standardized test every two months or so, and that's not including the college prep exams she's beginning and that she'll have to take next year. The pressure on schools to ensure that their students meet some farcical standard (and trust me, on the language side, farcical is the word for it--I have to undo the damage with my college students) set by NCLB is so great that teachers spend little time doing anything but teaching the next test. Students lack critical thinking and reasoning skills as a result.
You are right about the testing. My kids are all out of high school, but we did seem to have quite a few standardized tests during those years. Most of those were county-mandated, rather than state or national. My wife teaches middle school and they seem to be members of the "Test of the Month" club.

One thing my kids complained about was that English/Language/or whatever it's called wasn't very heavy on grammar. Most of the middle and high school teachers wanted to do literature. That's fine, but most of them also ignored basic things like how to write a coherent sentence.

All the testing didn't help the state average much, either. I think we only lead Mississippi and D.C. in SAT averages. Our legislators have found a solution to that problem, though. They have introduced legislation that allows bible study to be an elective class in high school.

What bullshit. It's not about "helping all students to succeed" (mummy, we had an Everyone Wins day at school today!) :rolleyes: It's about making sure the country has a sufficient supply of people with certain abilities. Too bad if most other people can't cut it, it's not about them. You simply can't lower the bar to raise children's self-esteem, without compromising the whole point of the exercise. Why do people have such a problem with the concept of failure? :confused:
Aye. 20 years ago, only a small percentage of the population would go to university, yet there were actually more engineering, maths and science students (and I mean in absolute numbers, not proportions which is not be expected when more people are admitted), which is shocking. Britain is going down the drain because Labour wants everyone to get a degree, regardless of whether it's of any use either to the country or to the bearer, and regardless of whether or not the expense and time put into this degree will even get the bearer a better salary! The chances are that, because there are so many more people with degrees, most degrees will simply become worth less and the same small core will go to good universities, get good degrees and good jobs as before, only instead of being focussed at them the higher education system will be focussed at the useless mass of people doing pointless degrees that they wont do well at anyway.

As far as I can see, Labour sat down and said "No one like Socialism. It makes everyone poor. I know! Let's try to make everyone middle class. What do middle class people do? Go to university. Let's send everyone to university, and we will element all social ills!" Sorry, but it doesnt work like that, and all this "expansion of oppurtunity" is doing is making useful courses unpopular and wasting huge numbers of peoples' time and money in encouraging them to do degrees that ultimately will be worth no more in academic terms in 10 years than A Levels were worth 10 years ago, or even GCSE 20 years ago.

While you're right about degrees becoming worthless and too many people going to university, you're wrong to blame it on Labour. It was the Tories who brought about this aspirational society. In reality, how does a government make more people go to university? Removing student grants and introducing student fees (Tory and Labour policies) should dissuade people from going to university, but that doesn't seem to have worked.

I disagree. It's about quality, not quantity. You need that elite, not a whole load of people who did the subject to a mediocre level and then let it atrophy away.
which is why the elite should get further maths and it should really mean something. that way you both get quantity and quality *nods*

the simple fact is that science degrees are in decline in the UK, and discouraging people from taking science because the exams are out of touch is a self-defeating attitude that doesn't take into account the whole picture in favour of sticking to old standards.

yes it would be better to maintain those standards, and even improve - not to fall back - but discouraging people from going into science and research related careers will damage the economy and the country more in the long term than just dipping the standards of the exam or sillabus a little. imho.


I think the problem in lower grades, and I'm not familiar with "forms", is that some teachers are afraid of the material, themselves. If they don't know alternate ways to prove a simple theorem, or illustrate an example, they they aren't going to be able to make the slow student understand. When it comes to math, nothing taught in grades lower than college is hard. It just takes a little understanding and a lot of practice. Where schools in the US fall short, I think, is in imparting the initial understanding. We certainly test enough.
oh i agree - teaching standards in maths are appalling. if you are a slow student - as i was - then teachers simply assuming that you know basic mathematical principles (that another teacher may have explained badly) and building on that is like trying to build a house on foundations made out of sponge.
maths teaching requires a real ability to communicate: the best maths teacher i ever had was one who didn't really get stuck and bogged down with the numbers or just doing example after example, but explained with words what the logic of we were doing was. same with my a-level physics teacher. but i've had other teachers who just wrote up the equations or principals, said what was going on and expected you to be able to understand it like them because they assume you have those foundations and have the mathematical understanding and ability that they have.
i was in the bottom set for maths in my school and we went through 3 teachers in 2 years... so i saw a fair bit of different maths-teaching styles and i know what worked/works for me and other less mathematically able students in my class.

i'm not sure how that little rant relates to examinations, but... uh... yeah :)

Careful, ye English, lest you become like unto the Americans. Yea, and thy ignorance and thy torment shall be increased a hundred fold.

Seriously, do everything you can to stop this kind of crap in your schools. Education should be about facts, about reality, not about teaching only those ideas that make everybody feel happy. Sometimes the correct answer hurts our feelings, particularly when that correct answer is different from the answer we selected on the examination, but it is better to have one's feelings hurt by contact with reality than to lurch through life under the misconception that one's personal opinions have the power to make 9 x 8 equal 36.

(Truth)
I couldn't agree more. On graduate recruitment schemes, the applicant/position ratio for technical disciplines is 4:1 and falling; for management disciplines, it is 100:1 and rising. There is a real skills imbalance in the education and labour markets.

On its own, this wouldn't even be so bad, were it not for the fact that most non-science degree course applicants have left school with poor English and reasoning skills. You are quite right, the government seems intent on pushing people through university whether or not it brings the student, or the country, any benefit. The fact that at the end of it all, most of them still won't be able to write to save their life, is a sad verdict on the whole enterprise.

I believe the pre-1990s system was better, with the academic elite getting the higher education necessary to meet their abilities and the country's needs, and the rest of the population at least enjoying an excellent standard of literacy and numeracy.

Careful, ye English, lest you become like unto the Americans. Yea, and thy ignorance and thy torment shall be increased a hundred fold.
Alas, that is the direction in which we are headed. :(

Alas, that is the direction in which we are headed. :(
You know what I find really weird? The people who are most strongly advocating that we reject the mindset of the Enlightenment are also the people who glorify those same "good old days" when they rant about our need for more "traditional values." They want to return us all to the 1700s, but without all that pesky Enlightenment nonsense.

Even though I didn't get my education in the UK, I don't see what the problem is so much. I did the IB system, and we just had three levels of math because the highest level was just way to hard for the average person, and the middle level was still difficult but with enough effort it was still manageble. The lowest level was just for people who really couldn't, or just didn't want to do math.

You know what I find really weird? The people who are most strongly advocating that we reject the mindset of the Enlightenment are also the people who glorify those same "good old days" when they rant about our need for more "traditional values." They want to return us all to the 1700s, but without all that pesky Enlightenment nonsense.
Yes, the Golden Age is always an illusion.

People get nostalgic about the days when Men were Men and Women were Women, you respected your religion, your elders and community leaders, you didn't have pollution, scary science or (hushed tone) sex, and you grew your own organic vegetables, etc.

What they don't realise is that infant and adult mortality were shocking, an infection would kill you, heat and light were luxuries, the actions of a family member could get your household forced to flee or killed, and depending how far back you want to go, the local tough guy could shoot or decapitate you just to test his latest purchase.

Here's an education reform: ban stupidity.

Here's an education reform: ban stupidity.
And how do you propose to enforce it?

personally, i hate maths. i had a series of shit teachers at GCSE, ended up with a B somehow, and still don't know my times-tables. my apparent inabillity to do maths ended up really disbenefiting me at uni when studying economics (got 14% in the econometrics end of year exams lol), but i don't think i'm stupid: just crap at maths (dyslexia has always seemed to play an issue there, or at least thats what the insitute said).

wooo deja vu

only differences I had several nice teachers who were unable to actually teach us anything and one incompitent evil bitch of a teacher.

I'm doing biochemistry and genetics (but still not helping with the maths aspect)

and i'm dyspraxic.........

one of the problems is how higher education is being funded in britain nowdays.

rather then putting funding into areas that are important such as sciences (biology, physics, chemistry, maths, engineering, IT(IT is a possible)) and the "traditional" studies (english, history, art, foreign languages, Welsh, education (add ones that you can't imagine a world without)) and pouring funding into what are seen as "soft" subjects (international politics, socioligy, media, film and telivision, sports science (yes I know its officially a science but its useless as a science they just come out not very good biologists) and so on) because of this ridiculus goal to get 50% of people into higher education.

If we take chemistry as an example, all over britain unis are losing chemistry departments as they are seen as being expensive and unessessary, soon in wales only Bangor and cardiff will have chemistry departments at all. In my university they couldn't find funding for the chemistry department so it ceased to exist but they have now built a massive and expensive new building for sports science..... (which buy the way won't allow them to teach it all in that building they will come and take biology's labs and equipment as well as take over lecture theartres (as they haven't got any in their new building))

its almost enought to make you go on a psycotic killing streak isn't it:mp5:

And how do you propose to enforce it?

We could try actually teaching the kids well. Not letting them get to A-Level and then realising "oops! we fucked up! they're still thick as shit! better make the exams easy!"

You are right about the testing. My kids are all out of high school, but we did seem to have quite a few standardized tests during those years. Most of those were county-mandated, rather than state or national. My wife teaches middle school and they seem to be members of the "Test of the Month" club.

One thing my kids complained about was that English/Language/or whatever it's called wasn't very heavy on grammar. Most of the middle and high school teachers wanted to do literature. That's fine, but most of them also ignored basic things like how to write a coherent sentence.

All the testing didn't help the state average much, either. I think we only lead Mississippi and D.C. in SAT averages. Our legislators have found a solution to that problem, though. They have introduced legislation that allows bible study to be an elective class in high school.
And there's a simple reason for that--literature is interesting, and grammar is boring. I'll say this much--most of my freshmen can write a coherent sentence, but they've gotten so locked into this five-paragraph theme that I want to strangle the people who decided that was a good format. But I'm breaking them out of it, and I have to say that I'm quite pleased with where they're winding up.