Please do read on … whilst most of you won’t offer the WJEC qualification you’ll find some links to some fab resources – I must say that the one good thing about all these changes is that the exam boards have certainly upped their game in terms of what support they are offering teachers! 

In 2012 following a review of the qualifications in Wales the Welsh government took up the recommendation that there should be TWO GCSEs in maths; one for numeracy and the other for mathematics techniques. The rationale being that the numeracy qual would build exclusively on the levels of numeracy expected by the end of KS3 because there was a perception that the levels of numeracy by many learners wasn’t high enough along with the fact that many employers/universities didn’t consider that a grade C (and above) did not guarantee sufficient numeracy.

These new quals were first awarded in November 2016 and the idea of having two distinct quals is that the GCSE Mathematics – Numeracy will assess the maths needed in everyday life, in the world of work and also other curriculum areas whilst the GCSE Mathematics will extend to aspects of maths needed for progression to scientific, technical or further maths study.

These are different to the quals offered by Eduqas for use in English schools and are specifically for Welsh maintained schools which must offer these two quals. There are also some other fundamental differences: WJEC have maintained the A*-G grading structure and have also got THREE tiers .. yep … you’ve guessed it : Higher (aimed at A* to C), Intermediate (aimed at grades B – E) and Foundation (aimed at grades D-G). The other difference is that there are only 2 papers for each qual … and yes you’ve guessed it … Calculator and Non Calculator (Jeese! You’re good!) both worth 50% of the total award. They also have different times/marks for the foundation tier – Higher/Intermediate are both 1 hour 45 minutes and out of 80 marks, whilst the Foundation tier is 1 hour 30 minutes and out of 65 marks.  They have also maintained what we know as “QWC” marks and are very explicit about the fact that 2 marks, at each tier are awarded for “organising, communicating and writing accurately”

Don’t be fooled into thinking that the level of challenge hasn’t been increased because it has, in addition to the changes to assessment objectives, by having two GCSE’s most of the existing content is examined across both quals.  

They have also included some multiple choice questions, True/False style questions and some where students have to break down a large amount of information given to them. What is interesting is that there is a November sitting that is available to those sitting the exam for the first time and also for those resitting the exams.

Just to clarify the above all relates to their Welsh schools only but they have an offering that we can use in England which is branded as EDUQAS – we are big fans of both the WJEC papers and Eduqas and use their past paper questions a lot with our tutor group … they are really challenging but full of lovely maths! I worked through the set of SAMs that they produced for the new 9-1 GCSE back in 2015 (which you can find -> here )

Anyway the point of this post is that whilst looking for something else I came across a whole host of support and resources available here ->  that they have produced and some of it is lovely!  In terms of what I found on the WJEC/Eduqas pages there is loads of great stuff but I particularly like their takeaway menus, starters of the day aimed at different attainments and also their question bank which is really simple to use!