Gavin Williamson, MP for South Staffordshire, has welcomed the announcement that there will be a Core Maths Early Adopter in South Staffordshire.
From this September, more than 5,000 students, including those at Cheslyn Hay Sport and Community High School, will have the chance to benefit from new ‘mid-level’ maths qualifications a year early.
Cheslyn Hay Sport and Community High School is one of nearly 200 school sixth-forms and colleges around the country that volunteered to be early adopters of the Core Maths courses.
The high-quality new qualifications – aimed at the 40 percent of young people who achieve a C at GCSE but do not take A level maths – are being launched by the Department for Education in post-16 institutions in September 2015.
They will give some 200,000 students a year the opportunity to study maths in post-16 education. A total of 179 schools and colleges, teaching more than 5,000 students, have asked to teach the two-year qualifications from this autumn.
Gavin said: “I think it is excellent that Cheslyn Hay and Community High School has volunteered to be one of the first to adopt this new scheme.
“Maths is playing an ever increasing role in our daily lives and many employers consider a strong ability in mathematics to be a basic requirement for any prospective candidate. I have no doubt that increasing the number of students who receive further training in this field will pay huge dividends in the future.”
The courses will build students’ competence and confidence in mathematical techniques. This will include statistics, advanced calculation, financial maths and modelling. They will help prepare students for further study and careers such as geography, business, marketing, computing, nursing or manufacturing.
Students taking the course will be expected to:
· develop a deeper understanding of mathematical methods and techniques including algebra, geometry and measure, probability, ratio and statistics.
· use a variety of statistical representations to analyse a range of situations and derive new information to draw meaningful conclusions.
· generate and apply mathematical solutions to non-routine questions and problems.
· use creative mathematical approaches to test and evaluate answers and conclusions.
All new Core Maths qualifications must contain at least 180 hours of guided learning to ensure students are able to develop mathematical skills in depth to a higher level than GCSE. It will be assessed via a final exam which will be taken at the end of the course, externally assessed and may include a coursework element.
Alongside the introduction of our Your Life campaign to increase the number of students studying maths and physics at A Level, new specialist maths free schools and the highest level of bursaries for the best maths graduates to train to teach, Maths Hubs and the Core Maths qualifications will help students achieve the same standards in maths as those in Japan, Singapore and China.