• Question: Should A-level maths be compulsory?

    Asked by w1ll1am to Ed, Keith, Tish, Nicola, Rachel on 12 Mar 2013.
    • Photo: Nicola Lazenby

      Nicola Lazenby answered on 12 Mar 2013:

      This is a tricky one – Ideally I’d love to say of course it should be!

      In reality, maths isn’t for everyone so it would be wrong to force people to do a subject they don’t like or aren’t good at for A Level. It would be like a Doctor saying that everyone should have to study Biology….some people just don’t like it and will find no use for the subject after their A Levels!

      A Level Maths should be compulsory when applying for engineering courses at university though – since maths is a very big part of engineering!

    • Photo: Edward Taylor

      Edward Taylor answered on 12 Mar 2013:

      I dont think Maths should be a compulsory A-level, because that would be unfair as some people just hate it!
      However I think that one sciency mathsy subject (e.g. maths/physics/biology/chemistry/geography) and one literary essay subject (English/a language/history) should both be compulsory. This way you would still get a choice of which ones to do, but you would have to do at least one of each. In my opinion it is really important for you guys to get a varied mixture of experiences and skills while at College. It also really helps when getting jobs!

    • Photo: Natasha Watson

      Natasha Watson answered on 13 Mar 2013:

      I don’t think it should be compulsory as GCSE Maths is compulsory. Maths is very important in day to day life, whether that’s calculating how long it will take you to travel somehwhere by car, or work out how much interest you’ll have to pay back on a loan, and hopefully GCSE Maths covers these types of things.

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