Exploring social patterns of participation in university-entrance level mathematics in England

Abstract

In recent years in England, considerable attention has been given to a range of apparent crises in mathematics education, one of which has been the long term decline of participation in university-entrance level (Advanced or A level) mathematics. Given the negative impact upon mathematics participation of a national reform of Advanced level qualifications, commonly known as Curriculum 2000, together with the government's emphasis on science, technology engineering and mathematics (STEM), the political intent to increase participation in Advanced level mathematics is clear. This paper uses the National Pupil Database (NPD) to develop a descriptive statistical account of how completion of Advanced level mathematics varies along the social axes of socioeconomic status, ethnicity and gender. The process of working with the NPD is discussed in some depth in order to clarify the processes involved in this type of quantitative analysis and then to illustrate how such analyses can be used to raise questions about who is studying mathematics in the post-16 age-range.

Keywords:

• university-entrance level mathematics
• advanced mathematics
• participation
• National Pupil Database

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to the Economic and Social Research Council for funding the GMAP Project (RES-061-25-0035), and the project advisory group for their thoughtful, probing questioning of my work.

Notes

1. http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/education/projects/an-gmap/index.php

2. ACORN (http://www.caci.co.uk/ACORN/acornmap.asp) is a system assigning individual address postcodes to 56 SES categories. The top level, which is the only level available in the NPD, has five categories: wealthy achievers, urban prosperity, comfortably off, moderate means and hard-pressed.

3. The Income Deprivation Affecting Children Index (IDACI) gives a score from 0 (low deprivation) to 1 (high deprivation) for each small cluster of postal addresses across England. The IDACI measure is an aggregated score for a few students who might have quite different social backgrounds.

4. Free Standing Mathematics Qualifications (FSMQs) are not tied to any particular Advanced level qualification but are worth the same credit as one third of an Advanced Supplementary qualification. Students who need to complement their chosen course of study with a particular aspect of mathematics (e.g. statistics) might study an FSMQ.