As Teachers of Mathematics, we believe that it is essential that all students gain a good understanding of each subject area prior to leaving school to prepare them for whatever path they choose to take in life. The need for basic maths skills permeates our everyday lives; we are required to perform mathematical tasks on a daily basis, often without realising the level of maths involved. The knowledge and techniques that we learned at school are used, even by those who didn\u2019t enjoy or consider themselves to be very good at maths, to read train timetables, estimate a shopping bill, or to measure ingredients for a recipe. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
There are many different reasons for wanting to achieve a good grade at Maths GCSE, at one end of the scale there are students that just need it to move to the next stage of their lives through to those that a sound knowledge of maths is an integral part of their career development. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
For students that wish to attend University, Maths at GCSE level is important as it is a current entry requirement, and is particularly important to those students whose aspirations include further study of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Maths (STEM). Each of these subjects will require the study of mathematics at an advanced level, and a student who does not have a firm grasp on the basic principles or has knowledge gaps in certain areas will find that their progress is hampered.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Many students have no intention of attending University, have no desire to study Mathematics or mathematically related subjects at Further Education, and therefore do not see the see the relevance of certain areas of study. For example, they are not able to envisage where solving quadratic equations, trigonometric problems, or finding the nth term of a number series will be of any use in their future careers. Their scepticism is not unfounded, it is very difficult to give real world problems and examples for some of the more abstract topic areas. There is still plenty of content in the current National Curriculum that is of practical everyday use. Tradespeople will use their knowledge of shape, space, and measure to calculate the materials required to complete a project, provide a quote, and then be able to bring that project in on budget. Small business owners need to understand cost, percentage changes to ensure they make a profit, charge the correct VAT, and pay the correct amount of tax. Office workers will use spreadsheets to analyse data, and a sound knowledge of algebraic manipulation would be extremely beneficial in this case. A stay at home parent or homemaker would need an understanding of budgeting to ensure that they could manage their finances effectively. Without doubt, in each of these cases a certain level of numeracy is also required so that the mathematical concepts that are applied are also numerically correct. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
We believe that one of the most important features of mathematics is problem solving. Returning to the earlier example of finding the nth term of a number series being considered a pointless task by some students, on closer inspection we can see that finding the nth term requires the student to spot a pattern, and then generate a rule to find the value of any term. This is problem solving in its simplest form, but by first learning the technique and acquiring the appropriate analytical skills they can then start to apply them to real world problems, which they would undoubtedly find far more engaging.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A good grade at GCSE shows any future employer that the student has the ability to learn and understand anything, can extract key data and information, and then use it to find a solution.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
As Teachers of Mathematics, we believe that it is essential that all students gain a good understanding of each subject area prior to leaving school to prepare them for whatever path they choose to take in life. The need for basic maths skills permeates our everyday lives; we are required to perform mathematical tasks on a daily basis, often without realising the level of maths involved. The knowledge and techniques that we learned at school are used, even by those […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[5,6,3,4],"class_list":["post-72","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","tag-problem-solving-is-important","tag-where-will-i-use-maths-in-real-life","tag-why-do-we-learn-maths","tag-why-is-maths-important"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mathslink.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mathslink.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mathslink.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mathslink.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mathslink.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=72"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.mathslink.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":74,"href":"https:\/\/www.mathslink.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72\/revisions\/74"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mathslink.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=72"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mathslink.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=72"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mathslink.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=72"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}