Maths

Both girls aren’t massive fans of maths so we’re going with the plod approach. We all accept the girls have to do GCSE maths and so we’re working with the aim of them sitting the iGCSE in summer 2026.

But what did our maths journey look like from KS2, when we first started home educating, through to GCSE level five years later?

For KS2 (7-11yrs) we used the CGP textbooks for the appropriate year group and supplemented with Schofield and Sims mental arithmetic books and Corbett Maths. We followed CGP’s scheme of work and diligently stuck to it.

For KS3 (11-14yrs) we continued to use CGP textbooks but supplemented with Mathswatch and Corbett Maths. We absolutely nailed year 7 maths but then our consistency went out the window due to sitting GCSE exams in other subjects. This, coupled with long periods of travelling abroad, meant maths got happily forgotten about. We basically ended up barely doing any maths at all January to July 2024.

By August 2024, we now had just two years to catch up and get the iGCSE completed before leaving for our family gap year in July 2026. We therefore gave ourselves a slap, revised our approach and started preparations for Maths iGCSE straight away; it was time to get serious with maths!

We moved the main resources from textbooks to videos and opted to follow the Maths Genie scheme of work for Edexcel iGCSE Maths Spec A. As at summer 2025, Aggie has already completed all the Foundation Level material and is well underway with higher material; Peggy is just a few months behind. We are well and truly back on schedule and, dare I say it, actually slightly enjoying it!

You can read about our approach for each stage in more detail using the links above; I include which resources we used, what went well and what I wish we’d done differently.