Maths clubs and competitions · Maths CAS idea
Mentoring scheme to encourage under-represented groups in maths
ServiceProject-ready
Set up a mentoring scheme where older students meet younger students from groups under-represented in advanced maths, to talk about subject choices and work on problems together.
Where the maths comes in
Problem sessions and honest talk about what studying maths involves.
Which CAS strand it fits
- Service: Unpaid, voluntary work with others that also has a learning benefit for you.
Your CAS coordinator decides how an experience counts at your school. Strand summaries are provisional (our words, being checked).
How to run it
- Look at your school's subject-choice data with a teacher to check the need.
- Recruit mentors and agree ground rules and supervision.
- Match mentors and mentees and meet regularly in school.
- Review with participants after a term.
This can grow into a CAS project if your CAS coordinator agrees: see planning a maths CAS project.
How to evidence it
- Planning notes and the need you identified
- Meeting log
- Anonymous feedback from mentees
Date everything and keep it in your school's CAS portfolio as you go. More on what counts as evidence.
Reflection prompts
Questions to think about, not answers to copy. Write your reflections in your own words, in whatever form your school accepts.
- What evidence showed there was a need?
- What did a mentee teach you?
- How did you make sure the scheme felt welcoming and not patronising?
Learning outcomes this often gives a chance to show
- Global significance. How does the local need you worked on connect to a wider issue? What did you learn about that issue that you did not know before?
- Collaboration. What did someone else bring that you could not have done alone? Describe a disagreement or a mix-up in the team. How was it resolved?
- Ethics. What choice in this experience had a right and a wrong way to do it? Whose interests did you have to protect (privacy, safety, fairness), and how?
Whether you meet an outcome depends on what you actually do and reflect on, not on the idea. Outcome labels are our short summaries, being checked.
Safety and ethics
- Meet only in school, supervised, and through school channels.
- Handle any subject-choice data anonymously and only with staff permission.
Agree every plan with your CAS coordinator first. Safety and ethics for maths CAS.
Problems and strategies for a club: competition maths.