English National Curriculum Starting Dates for Mathematics
This is an answer from STEM to the question “Does the new curriculum for mathematics come into effect in September 2014 or 2015?”
Well, the answer is, it depends...
The new curriculum will be taught in all maintained primary and secondary schools from September 2014 except:
Pupils in year 2 and year 6 in 2014/15, who will be taught this national curriculum in all subjects except English, mathematics and science, where they will follow the current national curriculum. This is because these pupils will be the last cohort to sit the current key stage 1 assessment and key stage 2 tests. These pupils will also have followed the current national curriculum in 2013/14 (as years 1 and 5) for English, mathematics and science.
Pupils in years 10 and 11 in 2014/15, who will be taught the new national curriculum in all subjects except English, mathematics and science programmes of study, where they will study the current key stage 4 programmes of study. The new national curriculum in English, mathematics and science will be introduced from 2015, alongside reformed GCSEs in these subjects.
So, all years will follow the new curriculum except years 2, 6, 10 and 11. Hence key stage three schemes of work will need to reflect the new curriculum.
GCSE
The first assessment of new two-year GCSE courses that start in September 2015 will be in June 2017.
A new grading scale that uses the numbers 1–9 to identify levels of performance, (with 9 being the top level). Where performance is below the minimum required to pass a GCSE, students will get a U.
Maths will be tiered with a foundation tier covering grades 1-5 and a higher tier covering grades 4–9.
Assessment by external exam only.
A much larger, more ‘challenging’ GCSE in maths with more emphasis on solving problems which require multi-step solutions. Students will be expected to learn key mathematical formulae by heart.
