7 questions on GCSE maths www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-23779549
I got 7 correct and was awarded A*.
I thought the questions were very simple ~ practically no more than mental arithmetic. Is GCSE maths really this basic?
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Got all correct. Seems surprisingly easy. Might say something about maths standard in this country :-)
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>> www.bbc.co.uk/schools/gcsebitesize/maths/mocks/
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What age pupils would take those examinations? I thought GCSE examinations were taken at age 14 to 16.
Thinking back to my schooldays, the 7 BBC news magazine examples would have been applicable to about age 10 to 11. I would rate the GCSE Bitesize questions as being applicable to about age 12.
As for being able to use a calculator for some of the papers, I'm gobsmacked. I wasn't allowed to use a calculator (well, a slide rule actually) until I started at university.
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I was doing more complex maths when I was in primary school in 1980!
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>> I was doing more complex maths when I was in primary school in 1980!
>>
I don't rate most of the questions as being mathematics. To me they're merely arithmetic, and mental arithmetic for a lot of them.
Last edited by: L'escargot on Wed 4 Sep 13 at 12:19
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I studied in India and my wife is a secondary maths teacher in UK.
I have observed a distinct difference of how math (and possibly other subjects) taught in two countries.
In India (at least in my time), all pupils were forced to follow same syllabus. The less capable pupils were pushed hard to reach towards median score. However, it meant, very bright pupils were actually pushed down toward median score too.
But in UK, based on pupils' capability, they are segregated into bright, mediocre and stupid (well, sort of) buckets from early age. The bright pupils solve harder problems and stupid ones have their goal reduced so much that they even struggle to achieve that.
I can't comment which system is better.
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Only three answers right but then I *was* made to quit maths well before O levels, as I was so bad at it, something which would be actionable these days. Yet I went on the get three (arts) A levels and in fact never felt handicapped by my innumeracy then, in the Army, in business, as a (mature) student and in about 17 years of teaching. The four basic operations, and derivation of percentages from them, were all I ever needed.
Until that is I volunteered two years ago to teach adults who were lexically-challenged (as illiterates are now probably known). My application form had listed my O and A levels, degrees, professional final diplomas, other qualifications and experience of teaching illiterate young solders to write home. Not enough, I must at least have O level maths.
I referred the interviewers to my application form but they obviously hadn't read it. I terminated the proceedings at that point.
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7 out 7.
However, whoever wrote question 4 needs taking out and shooting. The question is almost irrelevant to the answers, being an expression and the answers are all sums. The correct answer is the only one that meets the requirement for a sum in that both sides of the equals
sign are indeed equal. The others, they are not equal so the only way to arrive at the correct answer is to ignore the question and calculate the 'answers'.
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>>whoever wrote question 4 needs taking out and shooting
Not least because it should be "which", not "what".
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Don't forget that there are two tiers (higher and foundation) - one allows grades from G - C and one that includes questions that target C - A*. It's a terribly backwards system and I would be surprised if the questions on that test have any relevance to anything above the true basics on a GCSE mathematics exam.
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Got 6/7. Question 5 I didn't read the question properly, daft thicko.
My Dad has sometimes mentioned he was pleased since his year was the last to do O-levels, can't remember the year I think he said 1986??
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>> My Dad has sometimes mentioned he was pleased since his year was the last to
>> do O-levels, can't remember the year I think he said 1986??
Gawd that makes me feel old. Mine was the second year to sit GCSEs, in Spring 1989 :(
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Will you young pups go and boil your heads or do something useful.
Flippin kids, PITA.
:-)
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Young pups? Kids??
Oh, alright then.
:)
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I sat "O" grade in 1962 and "Higher" (approx AS level) in 1963.
In the intervening 50 years the course (fewer topics and less depth to topics) and exams have been watered down about 5/6 times.
Higher Maths was 2.5 hours in the morning and 3 hours in the afternoon.
Today it is 2 hrs 45mins split into 2 papers!
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>> My Dad has sometimes mentioned he was pleased since his year was the last to
>> do O-levels, can't remember the year I think he said 1986??
>>
I sat most of my 'O' levels in 1987, which I think was the final year they were around for most exam boards. I do have one GCSE as well though; one of my 'A' levels was economics, which I chose (or perhaps inexplicably was allowed to choose...) despite not having done it at 'O' level. As a result I sat the GCSE after the first year and the 'A' level in 1989 with the rest of my 'A' levels :-)
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I found some of my dad's old exercise books in the loft, and some of the stuff he studied at O-Level maths I didn't touch until the first year of a physics degree. Having said that, the physics I learned at GCSE was leagues ahead of what he was taught, but perhaps only because what I take to be commonplace knowledge was only just being (a) refined and (b) declassified in the early 60's.
Last edited by: Fursty Ferret on Wed 4 Sep 13 at 23:13
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I got 1 out of 7. Obviously a thicko. Sat my O levels in in 1972 and scraped 3. Failed Maths at resits 4 times but still manage to give customers the right change. Not my forte. School days were the worst of my life.
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I am average at maths good enough for me,now the spelling bit.>:)
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>> I sat most of my 'O' levels in 1987, which I think was the final
>> year they were around for most exam boards.
Is the correct answer. I sat O Levels in '86 and remember distinctly that we were the penultimate year to sit those exams at our school.
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Well I got 7. But as question 4 doesn't require the question to answer it, I doubt the test is very rigorous...
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5/7. Got a C at GCSE back in 1991.
Maths has always made my eyes glaze over, which is why I suspect I'm pretty crap at it.
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>> Well I got 7. But as question 4 doesn't require the question to answer it,
>> I doubt the test is very rigorous...
>>
When I did GCE, we had to put the step-by-step method we'd used to arrive at the answer. The answer on its own wasn't acceptable.
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>> When I did GCE, we had to put the step-by-step method we'd used to arrive
>> at the answer. The answer on its own wasn't acceptable.
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Same as in (live) GCSE at least when I did it. The famous instruction: "Show your working"
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got 6/7 used mental arithmetic and estimation only.
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My brother did his GCSEs in the summer and thought these were easy compared to what he did. He looked at these and did them in about two or three minutes and got 7/7. But he is very good at technical subjects, one of his maths teachers wrote once that she can’t understand his logic but always gets the correct answer.
It’s not all good news though, he can at times do daft things such as the other week he put diesel in his quad bike which cost me a couple of hours to sort out, plus recently he offered to make me a cup of tea but failed to put any water in the kettle. His brain tends to be one step ahead of what he should be concentrating on, the daft goon. We haven’t had a flooded bathroom this year though so maybe we’ve turned a corner.
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>> The famous instruction: "Show your working"
To which many would reply, "I am Sir"
;-)
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Only if their grammar skills were poor!
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VAT at 17.5%? How old is this test?
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>> VAT at 17.5%? How old is this test?
20% is too easy to work out. Its a test after all.
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>> VAT at 17.5%? How old is this test?
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The standard rate of VAT increased from 17.5% to 20% on 4th January 2011.
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GCSE maths - CGNorwich
