Core Maths
‘72% of students who got an A* - C at GCSE, don’t go on to study Maths at A Level.’ WHY?
An interesting debate started off proceedings about why students aren’t taking A level Maths, many reasons came up: Influence of the teacher; perceived difficulty of the subject; and also relating maths to the wider context, children can’t see the bigger picture of how it relates to them in later life.
Core Maths was then introduced as a means to help students ‘using simple maths in a complex way,’ not ‘a complex maths in a trivial way’. As a relatively new course, a lot of scholars around the room were sceptical initially, yet through the demonstration of the exam style questions a lot of us were won over by the practical approach to maths. Since many non-STEM degrees now include a high level of maths and statistics, Core Maths tries to give students a bridge to cross between GCSEs and university mathematics. A lot of the scholars enjoyed trying out the new questions and benefited from the in-depth look at the new course and I personally found it very insightful for teaching it in the future!
By Laura Groves