Graham Cumming

I’ve seen a proof copy of this and it’s excellent throughout - a must for anyone teaching GCSE Maths

Words to avoid Things that maths teachers should not say in lessons

Be sure to consult www.resourceaholic.com/p/words-to-a... before you do!

kjarna stærðfræði

All A levels are equal, but some are more equal than others

A level Maths has the highest completion rate, but quite a few drop outs from Further Maths from high prior attainers - to be expected?

It’s less than 500 days until the summer 2027 GCSE Maths exams, with a month separating paper 1 and paper 3. Pearson’s provisional timetable is available and you have until 20 March to feedback any concerns

qualifications.pearson.com/content/dam/...

When ALCAB insisted on the LDS, the cynical exam boards (Edexcel in particular) all told them it wouldn’t fly in timed written exams - but that was back in the Gove “who needs experts” days, so Ofqual insisted. The experiment was designed to fail

All valid points when discussing it as a past question in the classroom. But I think examiners would expect students to have practised these sorts of AO1 questions, making this one a relatively comfortable starter

It’s on the maths emporium website - you’ll need a teacher log in, though, so available at one remove. I imagine teachingmaths@pearson will give you access if you ask nicely

The mean score on the question you’ve highlighted on your blog was 2.82 out of 3, with even E grade students averaging 2.57 - I think they were bowled underarm on this one

From Private Eye

Good to see Ofqual have taken up my suggestion on re-marks today news.sky.com/story/cause-...

Think you’re good at maths? Here’s why your claim may not add up Sixty per cent of adults think they are good at maths but only 40 per cent scored highly in a research test

Feels like ages since “maths” and “not adding up” appeared in the same headline www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2026/01...

Next time you want to ask a question like “whose bright idea was it to put exact trig functions into Foundation tier?”, you’ll know who to get in touch with

Revealed: The experts drafting the new curriculum Curriculum drafters will support the government to revise the national curriculum following the Francis Review

The government is rehauling England's curriculum and assessment system following Prof Becky Francis' review last year - but they're not doing it alone.

We've got the full list of all the experts who will be drafting subject content for the revised curriculum:

www.tes.com/magazine/new...

GCSE Maths November 2025 broken down by age and sex

Data from www.jcq.org.uk/examination-...

For GCSE Maths in November 2025 boys comprised only 43.5% of the resit cohort, but achieved a slightly greater percentage of Grade 4+ results

Data from www.jcq.org.uk/examination-...

GCSE Maths November entries by exam board: Eduqas’ two-paper option and OCR’s very low grade boundaries continue to prove to be attractive options; Pearson’s entry has increased by AQA have suffered a drop in entries, as they did last summer

Only 1.6% of the entry (around 1150 students) achieved Grade 6 or better, so once again I’d question the wisdom (and expense) of four exam boards producing 11 different papers for such a small cohort

GCSE Maths resit entries are up on last November by 4.6% to 75203, but the number achieving grade 4 or above has stayed much the same (well, up by 0.5%) at 16800 or so (allowing for rounding errors)

Here’s what that looks like graphically for Grade 4 and above

Cumulative grade distributions for GCSE Maths by board: November exams 2017-2025

A screenshot of the most recent GCSE maths grade boundaries.

GCSE maths grade boundaries for Nov '25.

mathsbot.com/gcse/boundar...

Now with added Eduqas

I guess they’re not running on railway time

GCSE Mathematics Grade Boundaries for November exams 2017–2025 Foundation Tier (to be updated for Eduqas when they post theirs)

GCSE Maths resits results out tomorrow! No doubt there will be much lamenting about the 20-25% Grade 4+ statistic, but it still means there will be around 17,000 celebrating, around 10,000 of those now in Year 12; congratulations to those students and let’s accentuate the positive

Well, if you’re going to cheat on an exam…

Beef up your #coremaths

There are still too many students entered at Higher tier, but the absurdly low boundaries at grade 4 tend to encourage many centres to put students in anyway