Who is the course for? This course is for students who want to continue studying mathematics after GCSE. You'll already be familiar with some of the topics but the A level will give you the chance to study these and some new ones in much greater depth. Maths is a facilitating subject which means it will prepare you for a wide range of degree subjects. It can be a recommended or in fact, a necessary requirement for many mathematical, technical and scientific subjects at university. It's a good combination with most other subjects you can study at A level and will give you a useful set of transferable skills including logical reasoning, problem solving and analytical thinking skills that can lead to many different careers. What you’ll learn: Two thirds of the course will focus on pure mathematics covering techniques in algebra, geometry, trigonometry and calculus that form the fundamental building blocks of the subject. The remainder of the course covers mechanics (forces, energy, motion) and statistics (probability, data handling, testing hypotheses). Throughout the course you will be practising solving problems of increasing difficulty, applying the theory you have covered, developing your skills as a confident and independent mathematical thinker. What subjects this goes well with: Further Mathematics, Physics, Economics, Chemistry, Biology, Psychology and Computer Science How you’ll learn: Classroom based teaching What you can do next: Maths skills are in demand in a variety of jobs and sectors. You could move on to to degree level studies in subjects including mathematics, actuarial science, the natural and physical sciences, medicine, healthcare science, engineering, business and finance, economics and more. The transferable skills you'll acquire are useful in careers from finance to engineering, commerce to healthcare. There are opportunities for entering employment, higher and degree apprenticeships after A levels. How to prepare for this course: There are many things asked at GCSE that are never asked at A Level, but the one thing that will appear time and again is algebra. Here is a more specific breakdown of the topics you NEED to focus on: • Rearranging equations with complete confidence. It doesn’t matter where x is in the equation, you need to be able to find it! • Revise absolutely everything you know about quadratic equations: All of the methods of solving them, how to sketch them, how to complete the square and how to find their maximum or minimum point. • Simultaneous equations. In A Level, instead of being explicitly asked to solve a set of simultaneous equations, you are usually given some kind of context and after having done some preliminary work (don’t worry about what this entails right now), you will end up with two simultaneous equations to solve. You don’t want to have done all the hard work and then be caught out on the algebra at the end! • Indices. Know all of the laws of indices like the back of your hand. • Surds. Surds get revisited at the start of AS Level, and it’s only a slight step up from GCSE, which means you need to have a very solid grounding in the stuff you’ve already learnt about them! • Sketching graphs. This is huge in A Level. Tables of values have gone out the window and it’s much more about using important points of graphs (such as their intersections with the coordinates axes) to give rough sketches of them. Make sure you can sketch linear graphs and quadratic graphs. You’ll learn more at A Level. You’ll be learning a lot of new concepts in your A Level Maths course, and if you keep getting tripped up with algebra, you will fall behind quickly. Make sure it’s out of the way so you can focus your learning on what’s new.