Andrew Taylor: From September 2010 big changes to GCSE Mathematics specification will be brought in. This will include assessing the functional elements of mathematics, looking at reasoning and problem solving and applying mathematics in context.
Over the last two years we at AQA have been conducting pilots with hundreds of teachers and thousands of students all over the country, where many of the changes that will be rolled out nationally have already been incorporated.
Recently we’ve held a number of conferences where we’ve explained why AQA is the best option for assessing and teaching Mathematics.
Paul Metcalfe: My name’s Paul Metcalfe I’m the head of the AQA Maths Advisory Group. Welcome along today I hope the sessions this afternoon have been particularly useful to you.
I think there’s been lots of changes in the Mathematics curriculum dating back of course to Cockroft in 1984 rolling right up to the recent report by Professor Adrian Smith in February 2004. All of them suggesting that there was a greater need for things like functional mathematics, mathematics for real life and also problem solving or puzzle type mathematics as well which has been missing from the curriculum. To some extent coursework filled those requirements but with the withdrawal of coursework for the mathematics examination there is now a requirement to actually support teachers in better understanding how to teach students to be able to use and apply mathematics.
Andrew Taylor: Maths teachers are used to change over the last 2 years we’ve had 3 tier to 2 tier we’ve had coursework to non-coursework there’s been a lot of structural changes.
Paul Metcalfe: Andrew’s been a phenomenal motivator to all of us, I mean he has a passion and enthusiasm for mathematics which is easy to catch. As a result of his knowledge of the mathematics classroom, as a result of him talking to teachers up and down the country he really knows exactly what people want and he’s making sure that happens for us.
There is a lot of change but AQA have committed, I think as part of their charitable aims to support teachers in terms of teaching and learning and already they’re putting out in terms of resources passed examination papers, exemplar materials. They’re also developing a scheme of work in mathematics which I think will be particularly useful to teachers. They’ve set up this advisory group which they’ve set up locally to go an support other teachers locally in terms of understanding and better understanding what is required through functional mathematics and problem solving mathematics. In terms of specifications, making sure that responds to exactly what teachers have been asking for. In terms of, you know, this is what we want in mathematics and making sure, I think, for the first time in a very long time the curriculum leads assessment and not the assessment leading curriculum.
Andrew Taylor: Our new specification incorporates the best elements from our current popular modular specifications. There’ll be three units and all these units will be available in March, June and November exam series.
The total exam time has dropped to under 4 hours. This gives you the option of leaving the assessment until the end of the course without overloading either yourself or your students.
In developing the new specifications we’ve talked to teachers and they’ve told us about the importance of the fundamental number skills, of fractions, percentages, ratio and decimals and we’ve incorporated these across all three units, using them in different contexts.
In designing the specification we were keen to make sure that all units were big enough to properly assess across the range of grades, across the required skills and across the content. Within the specification we’ve kept the content descriptions quite brief, however, detailed guidance on every aspect of what needs to be taught will be provided by our interactive scheme of work which will be an essential resource when teaching begins.
Sarah Atherton: One of the things that attracted me to support the pilot with AQA was that we seemed to think along the same lines, was that we wanted to develop problem solving and thinking skills and that we wanted to develop more functional mathematicians. Their papers looked at developmentals we weren’t going to suddenly leap forward so over the 4 years of the pilot we have slowly moved forward towards the common goal.
There’s always been somebody on the end of a phone and usually a mathematician which has been very useful for me. They’ve also given us some very useful resources which we’ve not just used in key stage 4 but we’ve adapted to use throughout key stage 3 because this process cannot begin at the beginning of key stage 4. It has to be a style of teaching from as soon as you can introduce it into year 7.
It’s just very simple changes, very subtle changes within the classroom. Like if you’re expecting a child to read a scale on a weighing machine, you bring it into the classroom so that they can actually see and not just use a text book to do it. We take them to the local town, we have a maths trail where we take them around in year 7. It’s about bringing in that excitement that when they come to the maths department they’re wondering “Well what’s going to happen today” rather than ‘Oh it maths today”. It changes the perception of the subject.
Sarah Atherton teaching: Now what I want you to do now please is that this is over to your imagination. Imagine you’re a graphic design, you’ve got these skills, you’ve got a commission from a company to design a visually pleasing logo and you have to give instructions on how that is to be produced.
Student 1: Mrs Atherton really gets enthusiastic and she gets everyone involved and makes sure that people understand and always relates something in class to real life, for people’s futures for what they want to do because I want to do graphics and the construction we’ve been doing today really helps with it.
Sarah Atherton: Well in 2000 when I joined school the results were 41% A* to C and last year was 79% A* to C. That has a lot to do with, we believe, the style of teaching and also the comfortable atmosphere that we’ve managed to create within lessons, within the school.
Student 2: I like how you can apply all the processes to real life situations so it’s not just learning in a classroom you can apply to real life things that you might do in the world.
Student 3: I think it’s just really good because we know where we are going to use it in the future and that it’s so important for every sort of job, whether it’s fashion design or mathematics we know that we’re going to be using our maths so we actually want to use it.
Sarah Atherton: For me it reminded of why I became a teacher in the first place. It is a real thrill to know that you are providing young people into society that society absolutely desperately needs.
Andrew Taylor: AQA’s current 3 unit modular specification is the most popular nationally and we’ve gained great experience from running it. Hence we were very clear on the structure we wanted for the new GCSE. Since then throughout the accreditation and development process nothing has happened to change that conviction or to alter the structure that we set out with.
The timeline for completing the development of these new specifications, for all support that AQA is providing, and for first teaching leading to the first qualifications into 2012 looks like this: GFX Chart
When the new qualifications are rolled out nationally, AQA support doesn’t end. You can email or phone the subject team at any time.
AQA is building regional communities through our Maths Advisory Service and virtual communities thorough our website, our teachers resource zone and essentially though our interactive scheme of work.
We hope these resources will develop in line with your feedback and your input to support you, through 2010 through to 2012 and beyond.
Maths isn't really my thing.
Boring!
I don't get it!
Circle theorem?
Challenging.
Equations?
Frustrating!
There's a revolution going on, the GCSE Maths spec is changing
So, what's different? Well, everything!
Functional skills will be a major part of teaching, which means we'll be learning Maths that actually means something, Maths that's useful whatever career you choose.
We know that basic maths is an important part of everyday life, from making sure we get the right change, to dividing up a restaurant bill or even playing pool.
Sometimes, the stuff we learn in maths can seem so out of touch; which can make it confusing and boring. It makes us think well 'what's the point?'
The introduction of skills like problem solving means that we'll be learning skills we can actually use, and apply to real life.
These are exciting changes, as a teacher, you'll be able to teach Maths the way you've always wanted, and make it engaging and connected to us, so it ultimately means we get better results!
AQA are holding launch events in Autumn 2009 which will be really useful if you want to find out more.
So keep in touch!
Teachers can see the support currently available at this website (2010ready.aqa.org.uk/maths)
Finally, Maths that adds up!
Ashleigh Owusu, Ashlawn School and Science College
Hi, my name is Ashleigh Owusu and I go to Ashlawn School and I’m in class HA5 for Maths.
This year Maths is different to last year because last year we did more textbook work like question and answer. We’d be given work to do and then you just have to write it down and there wasn’t much communication between other students, whereas this year there is a mixture of more communication and group work than there was last year like for example we’re doing a project where we have to design our own school and we’re working in groups of four within our tables and we get to the research things that we don’t really get to do. It’s more realistic as in like we have a budget for certain things like school equipment and teachers, so we have to like use our minds and keep within our budget really and I think we can use that in the real world like when I go shopping with my mum I try and calculate things so that I can like convince her to get me stuff. Yes, so I think I use it in the real world as well.
Martin Shepherd, Head of Maths, Ashlawn School and Science College
I’m Martin Shepherd, I’m Head of Maths at Ashlawn School and Science College in Rugby.
Delivering the pilots has changed our teaching because students have been leading the direction of their learning a lot more, rather than teachers telling them what they’ll learn, about practising a bit, then come back to the next topic. Students have been taking the work where they want to take it, where they think it should be going. The benefits to teachers of the new GCSE Maths is that teachers aren’t teaching individual disparate processes. This is how you answer that kind of question. We’re helping students to learn but Mathematics is a broad subject how to use it as a tool for solving problems and that’s really what we should have been doing all along, that’s what we could be doing as Maths teachers. Not preparing students just for GCSE but preparing them for life, good basic knowledge of Mathematics but also the ability to solve problems.
Support from AQA has been what I would expect an exam board to be doing and in 15 years of being Head of Maths sometimes you get some support and sometimes you don’t. There’s a big challenge facing Mathematics departments and we will need the support from exam boards and AQA are providing the support that we need, showing us what their thinking is, does it fit in with our thinking, and listening to us, discussing with us so it not just the exam board telling us what we should be doing it’s a discussion process and I think that’s vital because we need to move schools on together rather than just drag them along and I think AQA are doing that very well at the moment.
What I have enjoyed most about the pilot. I think it’s more than just the pilot I think it’s what the pilot is doing for Maths teaching generally. You cannot teach a child how to solve problems in six months. You need to build up a child’s confidence and a base of Mathematics so our schemes of learning have had to change from 7, 8, 9 and 10 and 11, and so seeing the change in the way students view Mathematics see that they take Mathematics out of the classroom and bring it in to the classroom from outside and seeing how much more engaged our students are in their Mathematics. It’s not just a subject they do in school, it’s something that appears all over the place. That’s been exactly what I wanted it to do, that’s what for me Maths is, and to see 11 to 12 year olds think the same way as me about it has been great.
Gareth Eastham, Head of Maths, Nicholas Chamberlaine Technology College
Hi I’m Gareth Eastham, I work at Nicolas Chamberlaine Technology College as the Head of Maths. I’ve been here now for about five years. I’ve been doing the functional skills for three years in January plus the pilot of the new GCSE.
The good thing about being involved in the pilot over the past three years is that we’ve had input into how the questions are delivered and AQA have asked us about what we feel and the questions themselves seem to be developing and getter better each year.
The biggest changes we’ve had to make in the delivery of Maths lessons is that teachers no longer have to rely on text books. Teachers are becoming more confident in delivering in different ways. The teaching is related to more real life situations when possible rather than just sitting down doing work from text books. The support and feedback I get from AQA has been quite useful especially the ERA materials they produce on the Internet. When my students have sat an exam I can easily access it and see a breakdown of their results even down to the questions they’ve done to enable me to inform my teachers on areas there may be weaknesses with that group.
It has changed our students in quite a few different ways but also it’s enabled them to approach mathematical problems and feel on the whole confident to address them and to solve those problems, whereas in the past they would have been scared to try things and may be even scared to get things wrong. I feel the students are more engaged, especially when we’re using more functional skills based questions. Because they see a reason for their Maths, they see a reason why they are doing the Maths in solving real life problems which they’re going to run up against in everyday life. May be not now but in the future when they’re older and if they can relate that to that they’re much more willing to be more interested in that to solve those problems.
Year 11 students, Nicolas Chamberlaine Technology College
I find the Maths lessons more engaging now because of the fact that we’re given something but not told exactly how to do it. Instead of being spoon fed the sort of questions and how to do them, we’re told to use what we know to find the answer which is more rewarding when you find the answer.
It’s changed, it’s not the same as it used to be because you used to be doing bookwork, bookwork, bookwork, but now you’re being more interactive with the class in the lessons and you’re all being involved together and doing different types of things.
Well obviously the rest of the class including me I suppose, enjoyed it more because previously they didn’t really understand why Maths is important but now we’re starting to understand why it could be used at work and at home.
Things in functional Maths that I particularly enjoy is the fact that it was practical instead of just giving us a book that just gave us questions, they sort of gave us
What’s changed in Maths is that we don’t do as much work out of the books, we use computers and group work and I think it makes it easier to remember because you’re not just doing pages and pages of questions.
Maths has definitely helped in other subjects, um, Geography, we use quite a lot of statistics and we can compare them using graphs and that kind of thing.
In business there’s balance charts which Maths is really useful for and Physics, particularly with a lot of equations and that kind of thing. The thing I like about Maths is that you’re doing like different things you know problem solving and different subjects.
I think that teachers are finding it more interesting because they’re not having to spoon feed it to the students and they sort of have less to do because the class is having debate with each other
