The New A-Level Specification: Order of Teaching

The new spec moves A-Level Maths from a modular to a linear course: you now have a blank canvas. Do you want to teach Differentiation all in one go? You can if you like, but then what topics will the students need to have met already in order to do this?

I recently attended training where we had cut-outs of all the detailed content statements. In pairs, we tied a length of string across the room and tried to pin each statement up in what we believed to be the correct teaching order. We only spent half an hour on this activity and only got a small portion of the way through, and with the number of different interpretations around the room from different pairs, it was clear this was going to be more complicated than I had originally anticipated.

There’s also another problem: AS Maths. Many institutions won't offer it but there's bound to be students that enrol on the two year course that would be more suitable for just AS. This is particularly inevitable for institutions that have offered the outgoing Use of Maths and have an entry grade for A-Level Maths at a 6. For these it may well be suitable to have a similar order of teaching for AS and A-Level up until Christmas, say, allowing for transfers between the two, which limits that blank canvas somewhat.

Another problem is that we don't have long. It doesn't have to be perfect, but I'd like to have a relatively good idea about what we'll be teaching when for the next two years by September. On top of everything else we have to do between now and then, we could each of us write the order of teaching from scratch, but why should every institution take on this huge job individually? Some institutions will find this easier than others, having department teams of 10 to 20, while some have teams of just 1. Why can't we all just use one big shared Google Doc? Or would it be too many cooks?

Thankfully AQA has designed a route map for both AS and A-Level and it's an excellent place to start as a reference, but I'm a little reluctant to blindly follow it (perhaps only because I've been promised a blank canvas and I've had no input into its construction).

Two ideas:

• Firstly, I'm building a playlist of teaching videos to go through the new spec, but instead of making them in teaching order, I'm going through them via the detailed content statements. That way, teachers can easily find them and insert them into schemes of work.
• Secondly, I would use as a quick teaching frame your current scheme of work. Take out the topics that have gone, add in the weeks you gain from not having to revise for AS exams, then put in the new topics you need to cover. It's not a perfect solution, but remember you can edit as you go.