Mathematics

Examining Body: OCR

Entry Criteria: Minimum of five grade 4 GCSE passes; these must include at least grade 4 in English Language. Additionally, this course requires Grade 7 in Maths.

If you enjoyed GCSE Mathematics and are curious to take your understanding further, A Level Mathematics offers the perfect next challenge. Building on familiar topics such as quadratics, trigonometry and coordinate geometry, you’ll deepen your knowledge by exploring more powerful and elegant methods of solving problems. You’ll discover how differentiation allows you to analyse change—finding gradients of curves, identifying turning points, and modelling everything from the motion of vehicles to rates of growth in populations and finance. Integration, the reverse process, enables you to calculate areas and is widely used in fields such as engineering, physics and economics to solve real-world problems. A Level Mathematics is both challenging and rewarding, developing your logical thinking, problem-solving skills and confidence with abstract ideas. Whether you’re interested in careers in science, technology, finance, or beyond, it provides a strong foundation for a wide range of future opportunities. If you’re motivated, curious, and enjoy stretching your mind, this course will be both stimulating and highly valuable.

Component 1: Pure Mathematics will include proving mathematical statements, understanding indices, surds and polynomials. You will learn how to use different types of functions and their graphs. We discuss the rules of coordinate geometry and look at how logarithms and exponentials relate to each other and how they can solve complicated problems. We delve further into the world of trigonometry and learn about radians, as well as discover how differentiation and integration works. Other topics covered include vectors, binomial expansion, numerical methods, sequences and series.

Component 2: In Statistics you will learn how to work with large data sets, deal with advanced probability scenarios and use hypothesis testing and the normal distribution to solve mathematical problems.

Component 3: Mechanics looks at the forces and motion of objects. You will explore the rules of kinematics and the applications of vectors, and we will discuss how projectiles and moments apply to models of real-world situations. This module is particularly useful for students interested in Physics.

There are three exams – the first covers Pure Maths only, the second covers components of Pure Mathematics and Statistics and the third covers components of Pure Mathematics and Mechanics. All exams are 2 hours long.