FOCUS ON MATHEMATICS

This year the Mathematics Department have been thankful to be back in the classroom. All pupils settled well and made smooth transitions from last academic year to this year.

Academic Mathematics is important at Manor House School and the Schemes of Learning put in place to align with the iGCSE 9-1 grading are working well. We tailor topics taught to overlap throughout Key Stage 3, building upon pupils’ previous knowledge, to master the foundations of content prior to beginning the Key Stage 4 Scheme leading them towards their iGCSE Examination at the end of Year 11. The iGCSE Mathematics Examination differs from the traditional GCSE Mathematics in having extra content (Calculus, Arithmetic Series, and some further Vectors) that gives pupils a good start toward A-Level Maths topics. The pupils sitting iGCSE also have a slightly different format – Two 2-hour papers (calculator is permitted in both), compared to three 1.5-hour papers for GCSE (1 non-calculator). The inclusion of a Formula sheet at iGCSE also sets the two apart. The choice to sit the Edexcel iGCSE examination is based on research that suggests females perform better when provided with formulae, and less application of questions on spatial-reasoning which appear frequently on non-calculator

papers (Ceci, Williams, & Barnett, 2009; Liu & Wilson, 2009; Miller & Halpern, 2014). The Department are keen to give pupils opportunities for problembased questions too. The UK Mathematics Trust (UKMT) offer various challenges and this year, pupils in Year 7 and 8 had the opportunity to sit a special “25th Anniversary Challenge”. This was run in addition to the Junior Maths Challenge (for Years 6 to 8) and the Intermediate Maths Challenge (for Years 9 to 11). There are two questions from this below for you to try. Unfortunately, the much loved “Team Challenge” was unable to run this year due to timing of the lifting of Covid restrictions, but we hope that this will be back again next academic year. Mr O’Neill