Shaping the future of maths

By Peter Mattock
Published 02 October 2023

Peter Mattock has been teaching maths since 2006 and now works as an Assistant Principal at an 11-16 school in Leicestershire. He is an NCETM PD Lead, a specialist leader of education, and the author of “Visible Maths”, “Conceptual Maths” and “Leading Maths”. Peter is also a member of the AQA Maths Expert Panel.

My favourite things about AQA Level 2 Further Maths

Personally, I love teaching Level 2 Further Maths qualification. The topics are brilliantly chosen to really stretch and connect ideas that learners encounter at GCSE (for example, connecting linear equations and transformations through matrices) and to support learners with the transition to A-level. The learners also really value the qualification, for a number of reasons. For some who find the GCSE Maths more straightforward, they enjoy the challenge and the feeling of having to make an effort to understand some maths. For others, it enhances their profile for their next stage of education. Many learners (and teachers) also comment as to how it supports the very top learners with their GCSE Maths, making them more creative and competent with reasoning and problem solving.

Our centre and cohort

We are an 11–16 centre with approximately 1,200 learners on roll and our Further Maths cohorts tend to start out in the mid-to-high twenties, and then have a few drop out part way through the course.

Why we chose AQA

We were using AQA for our GCSE Maths course, and were very happy with the style of assessment and the support provided, so when we came to offer the Further Maths course it made perfect sense to continue to work with AQA to deliver this qualification.

Attracting learners to the course

Every year we send a letter out to the parents of our higher attaining maths learners in about May of Year 10, which invites them and their parents to an information evening where we talk about the course and its benefits. We share how we deliver it and the commitment that we need from learners and parents. We then place the presentation on the school website and learners can sign up to the course to start in Year 11. AQA has also produced a parent and learner leaflet (228.5 KB), containing information about the course and its benefits.

How we teach Level 2 Further Maths

We run a 75-minute lesson every Friday after school designed specifically to explore the aspects of the course that are not covered in the regular GCSE Maths qualification and to stretch areas that tend to go beyond the type of question asked at GCSE (for example solving quartic equations that can be treated as quadratics).

There are roughly 24 of these sessions that run from September to April, after which sessions become optional revision sessions. We ask all learners to purchase a textbook to support the course prior to starting (we purchase one ourselves for those learners who require financial assistance) and use this to help with teaching and homework. Learners are expected to complete and mark their homework every week, and then bring any issues about the homework to the following lesson. The exception to this is homework over the October, Christmas and February breaks which we have designed from resources available on the Integral website. We treat these as assessed pieces of work and use to help report progress and predicted outcomes to parents. Learners then complete a mock exam in March, which we use to further guide learners on areas they may need to revise.

Top tips for teaching

My tips for teaching are the same for the introduction of any new course – make sure the staff delivering it have the opportunities for the necessary professional development – such as AQA’s Getting started events – to ensure they have the subject knowledge and subject pedagogical knowledge they will need to teach the course effectively. Ensure staff have access to the resources they need, so learners have a high-quality experience, and plan the curriculum well, so that the sequencing of the content is clear and there is enough flexibility to revisit things if necessary. Like anything in teaching, preparation is more than half of the battle.

Resources and support

Our primary resource is the textbook, but we also use resources from Integral and All About Maths. Specifically some of the old matrices resources from Integral, as we will use adjacency matrices to introduce the idea of the matrix even though this isn’t part of the course, and we use questions taken from there to build our assessed homework. We are also building in the use of the resources being published on All About Maths across the academic year 23–24 as an extra bank of materials to support and challenge learners, such as AQA’s worksheets and topic tests.

I have only needed to write one resource, which prompts learners to explore the properties of the unit circle that we introduce when it comes to non-right-angled trigonometry, as there wasn’t anything in either the textbook or the online resources that was quite right for that particular learning intention.