As someone who taught maths for 10 years in the 1980s and has recently come back to maths tutoring, a look at the syllabus from Edexcel, the main examining board, shows that little has changed.
Most of my years 10 and 11 students are studying for Edexcel GCSE with a few sitting for the IGCSE version. IGCSE? That’s International GCSE. Available in more than 100 countries, it doesn’t have to adhere to the national curriculum. For example, there is no compulsory study of Shakespeare in English. Perhaps this is part of the reason why in 2006 the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority, which assesses the strength of various qualifications, deemed that IGCSE was “not suitable for assessing what pupils in England learn.” State school pupils do not sit IGCSE exams because the government has not approved them for state school funding.
The real value for IGCSE in maths is that it prepares brighter students for their AS-level studies by including extra topics such as calculus, set theory and functions.
Sounds reasonable – until you realise that a local non-state school will only allow students to take the higher level of IGCSE maths with grades from A* down to E. The easier foundation level, with grades from C to G, is not offered.
One of my students at this school mentioned the higher level pass mark for a grade C. I thought they had made a mistake. When a second pupil made a similar comment and that their teacher had quoted this figure, I decided to investigate.
So, what do you need for a grade C?
Twenty-four per cent. Yes, you read correctly – 24%. In any other walk of life such a figure would be viewed as an abject failure but not, it appears, for Edexcel’s maths IGCSE. It’s easy to confirm this as all subject boundary marks are freely available on Edexcel’s website. Just 42% obtains a grade B, 61% a grade A and 80% a grade A*. More scary, a grade D, viewed as barely a fail, can be obtained with just 12%!
Thinking that this might be an IGCSE issue, I also checked the standard GCSE maths grade boundaries. Over the past five years, the highest mark required for a grade C at higher level was 28%; last November a student would only have needed 23%. The anomaly appears to be confined almost solely to maths GCSE.
On checking with Edexcel I was informed that the low mark was due to the discontinuation of the modular exam. As this had been taken at three sittings and the current exam is at one sitting, the lower mark boundaries reflected this and is unlikely to change in the near future.
The real question is: why are schools forcing weak pupils to sit higher level not foundation level? There’s only one answer: to maintain academic results. It’s easier to get 24% at higher level than the 67-70% required for a grade C at foundation level. Does it benefit the students? Certainly not. It’s questionable whether 24% shows even a basic level of numeracy.
The end result will be that in the future, all employers will need to give prospective employees a comprehensive numeracy test…
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