GCSE Maths Is Not a Basic Skills Test — And It Shouldn't Be Compulsory!

It's that time of year again - GCSE results day has happened, and my feeds are full of articles about it. And I am repeatedly seeing messaging along the lines of “around 40% of students are leaving school without basic maths skills” - a statistic taken from the fact that 58.2% of students achieved a Grade 4 or above in their GCSE maths this year.  

However, that statement - “around 40% of students are leaving school without basic maths skills” - is misleading on so many levels!

To start with, the ~40% failing rate is a design of the system. GCSEs are designed to be fair in that anyone can pass (grades aren’t dictated by your socioeconomic background), and in theory - according to the official statements - everyone could pass. But in practice, your grade effectively comes from a ranking not a checklist - if it is criterion-referenced and there is an objective grading rubric, why keep it so secret? Think of it like a race - if you finish in the top 60% you pass, but no amount of hard work will allow everyone to finish in the top 60%. The exam boards’ official line is that the 60% is not fixed; but the fact that it's consistently around 60% year upon year (excluding covid years) is telling. Grade boundaries are set towards the end of the marking process. If performance is better, it gets explained away as being due to simpler conditions, and the raw marks needed for each grade rises. So how can you ever demonstrate an actual rise in ability as a cohort? 

Additionally, the pass rate is correlated with ability in certain skills, but there is no direct causal relationship. That is to say that you do not pass GCSE maths by simply demonstrating you can do a specific checklist of skills. The skills linked to each grade come from an average profile of students who achieved that grade. It's saying “if you’re in the top 60% of the exam takers you likely have these specific skills” not “if you have these specific skills that will definitely put you on or above a Grade 4.” 

Therefore you can fail GCSE maths while still possessing all the maths skills you need to achieve in everyday life (though of course some people do both fail and lack basic skills - it's just not as neat as the 40% the media pulls out). In the same way you can be a skilled runner and still not make it into the top 60% in a race - it doesn’t only depend on you and your skills, it also depends on the skills of your fellow racers too. 

But above and beyond that, the bit I really want to draw attention to here, is the fact that GCSE maths is an academic qualification, and not a basic life skills test!

You can have basic numeracy skills and still be among the ~40% failing GCSE maths simply because, despite the overlap at the bottom end, GCSE maths isn’t designed to test functional skills. 

We understand this with subjects like Geography. Having a GCSE in Geography is a sure sign you have basic knowledge about the world. But it’s rare to see people claim the reverse is true -  it’s understood that a lack of GCSE Geography isn’t a sure sign that you lack a basic understanding of the world, it's understood that students gained that knowledge in their pre-GCSE studies. Additionally, having GCSE Geography, even at just a Grade 4 (which is taken to be equivalent to an old school C), is understood to show that you have more than the basic knowledge - it’s a course designed to deepen your understanding to set you up for further study. 

An illustration - the numbers here are not meant to be taken to depict any specific cohort.

The same is true for maths. And here’s where I’m going to get controversial, especially voicing this option as a GCSE maths tutor. Since GCSE maths is an academic course designed to demonstrate the deeper understanding needed for further study, it should not be compulsory for all students!

That is not to say GCSE maths doesn’t hold immense value - as an academic filter. It should remain as an entry requirement into all A-level and University courses - almost all students who want to follow an academic pathway in any subject need to have at least a Grade 4 in maths. This allows us to justify the specialisation we have in UK academia; the earlier high-quality breadth of knowledge has already been objectively demonstrated. Without this filter we would need a model more akin to the US system, where the core curriculum is still required at the college level. 

Covid neatly demonstrated that the standardisation required to fulfil this purpose remained the priority for exam boards. When exams were cancelled and the grade descriptors were used more heavily as rubrics by teachers we saw “grade inflation”. This wasn’t seen as a success for national numeracy, it was seen as a glitch that needed to be rectified. More students achieving the passing grades in GCSE maths decreased the value of these grades, and the exam boards were very clear that they would be actively bringing the proportions back down to pre-covid levels. 

And this is why compulsory GCSE maths for all simply makes no sense to me. We mandate that every student must aim for a standard that would lose value if they were all to succeed. Then we weave a narrative of failure when they inevitably don’t all succeed. How is this fair? Or useful?

The most common argument I’ve seen for keeping the GCSE maths mandate is that removing it would lower standards. I would argue that keeping it lowers standards. By trying to make the GCSE maths course both an academic gatekeeper and a demonstration of basic skills you water it down. You lower its academic prestige in either practice, in narrative, or both. You’re selling an incorrect story that our specialist universities only require students to demonstrate basic maths skills, which makes them less attractive. You’re selling an incorrect story that students who do achieve a GCSE maths qualification have only cleared a low bar, which limits how proud they are of it. 

Removing the mandate wouldn’t lower standards, it would clarify them. Higher education is not the only path to success in this country. Demonstrating an ability to progress on this path isn’t a requirement everyone needs to meet. The true standard every single student should be meeting before they leave school is demonstrating strong competence in the core maths skills needed to navigate everyday adult life. 

GCSE maths is unnecessary for meeting this standard. It isn’t equipped to demonstrate this standard clearly. And, I believe, in many cases the GCSE maths mandate is actively sabotaging this standard. 

Depending on the level of faith in the system, the GCSE maths mandate breeds resentment at best and learned helplessness at worst in many students that would otherwise be able to clear this standard. There is dissonance between the reality of the GCSE maths course and its exams, and the narrative that it’s measuring basic maths skills. 

This, when seen by students who aren’t interested in an academic path, is where the resentment comes from. They overcorrect - clearly they don’t need all of these skills for their own life, they are being lied to, and so the truth must be that they need none of these skills. Many go on to refuse to engage in any maths as an adult because they now actively dislike maths, and they therefore struggle with the basic skills they could have had.  

Or, they don’t see the dissonance for themselves. They believe not having a Grade 4 means they lack basic skills. Their confidence gets shaken again and again as they are forced through the resit structure that isn't working (only 17.1% of students resitting GCSE maths this year passed it). They internalise that they cannot do maths, and it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. 

And then there’s the lowest ability students - the ones that genuinely do struggle to meet the standard of strong competence in core maths skills. We are forcing them to learn to run before we’ve ensured they can walk - leading to many of them being unable to do either. By insisting they sit an academic qualification we hand them all the maths skills they need for adult life, then we hand them some more skills they don't actually need. And then we throw in some academic-level transferable skills for good measure. It’s too much - even at the Foundation level! It's distracting, and overwhelming, and so in many cases it lowers their ability to meet the minimum standard that actually matters. 

To summarise, having GCSE maths as compulsory for all harms students at all levels. The narrative surrounding the qualification lowers its perceived academic rigour, which harms the higher-ability students. The borderline students come away with resentment or learned helplessness. And the lowest-ability students cannot focus on mastering the core skills they actually need. 

To finish, I want to be clear that I am not in favour of scrapping maths until age 16 entirely. I am very much in favour of all students studying maths until age 16, and needing to continue to take it until 18 if they haven’t demonstrated competence at 16. I am suggesting that different pathways open up after KS3 - with a rigorous functional skills maths exam being the minimum standard . This is a course and set of exams which already exists. Many lower performing students do take it at age 17+ - but currently they first have to fail a course they don’t need before we allow them to study the course they do need. Which is obviously great for confidence and positive attitude towards maths!

When I was a teenager I went to a school of Technology - so had to take a technology option in my GCSE years. There were so many to choose from - and even just that choice, the sense of ownership over it, increased engagement. For some of the options you had to have it as one of your band choices on top of the core requirement - so you had extra hours each week of technology.

Did you know there are other Level 2 maths qualifications available to 14-16 year olds already? GCSE statistics, GCSE further maths, and more. Normalising maths options doesn’t only help the lower end, it opens up these options more at the higher end too. It invites honest discussion about what each course is needed for, and what pathways each opens up for students. It protects the academic prestige of the GCSE courses. It increases the chances that everyone will leave school with strong competence in the core maths skills needed to navigate everyday adult life. And it brings with it actual data for tracking that standard - so the media can no longer mislead you into believing “around 40% of students are leaving school without basic maths skills”.