‘Hello, my name is failure…’: A case study exploring GCSE maths resit and the debut of the Maths Motivator in further education

The Review of Vocational Education, written by Baroness Wolf and published in 2011, set out a series of recommendations for an improvement in further education for students aged 16 to 19 (Wolf, 2011). As a direct result of the report, all 16- to 19-year-olds in further education who have not yet achieved a grade C (or 4) in GCSE mathematics and/or English must be enrolled on a specific mathematics or English course to receive funding for their main programme of study. In 2019, over 180,000 students in further education were entered for GCSE maths because they had not reached a ‘standard pass’ – grade 4 – at secondary school (Joint Council for Qualifications, 2019). Of those entered, only one in five achieved a maths grade 4 (JCQ, 2019). After entering further education wearing a label of failure, students often find themselves in a cycle of resits. Most are only released from this by turning 19, rather than by achieving a pass (Bellamy, 2017). This policy has drawn a large a