King's Maths School

In your own words, what is King’s Maths School?

King’s Maths School is a place for keen mathematicians to meet keen maths friends, and enjoy their company!

What is exciting about King’s Maths School?

Getting to be around people like yourself, and being able to say “I have this cool thing to share with you all”, without feeling out of place.

What is your favourite subject to study? Why?

That’s hard, I like all of them! I really enjoy the way maths is taught here, there’s a lot of interesting stuff that comes up at A Level and the teachers are very enthusiastic. Last year I really enjoyed the further core mathematics, I thought it had lots of really interesting topics and it was great fun. I enjoy physics too, there was stuff on electricity and material science that I found interesting. It’s quite a ‘mathsy’ version of physics, which is different from what I have experienced before; we focus more on modelling during our investigations. Computer Science is good as well. I have a programming background, so I am familiar with some of the reading, and there have been really exciting topics on how the internet works and on finance data machines, to name but a few. 

What is it that makes the teaching here so different and such good quality?

I think it’s the enthusiasm, absolutely! All the teachers are really happy to be here and make their subject cool to learn. The fact that all the pupils here are at a high level means that the classes are fast paced, so we don’t become bored on the same topic for weeks on end. If you do become stuck, there are lots of opportunities to catch up after school and ask for teacher’s help, which is really nice.

Do you enjoy studying a Modern Foreign Language?

I studied French, which was quite fun. Knowledge of other languages is a nice thing to have, it is something that is genuinely useful.

What have the problem solving sessions been like? 

They’ve been great fun! We are given a problem sheet at the beginning of the session, and we go through all the problems. We have mentors to assist us, and if you need help you can ask for it, but otherwise these sessions are very student lead. You therefore get a really good idea of how something works because you’ve done the work yourself! A good example would be a recent session focusing on implications. We started off with a statement that implied another statement and tried to use those to solve different things and went from there. Even though we had touched on implications a little in class, it was much more helpful to look at it again in our mentoring sessions, and to solve the problem on our own.

Tell me about what other opportunities you have enjoyed at King’s Maths School?  

My friends and I went to the nearby Oasis Academy to teach maths. We lead a group of year 8 pupils, who were identified as high level students, and we got to teach them topics that were not yet on their curriculum. It was tough because we had to ensure our pupils found the topics we presented interesting and understandable. Communication is a skill I have learnt throughout this activity. I’ve had to learn how to explain theories, which are simple in my head, to someone who had never encountered them before. This also improved my general ability to ‘present’ maths, as I have learnt how to explain these topics, both in person and on paper, and discuss them beyond definition to a variety of audiences.  

What are the teachers like?

They are really enthusiastic and passionate about their subjects, and they are fun! Our teachers make you interested in whatever topic they are teaching, it’s not just a case of copying what has been written on the board. It is something quite special.

Do you attend any clubs or societies?

After school clubs are a nice way to spend your evenings, as you get to spend time with your friends and do interesting things! I went to Robot Club and Board Games Club. I wanted to attend Robot Club because, come on, robots! We’ve been working recently to try and make a football robot, which is tough because we have to work hard to position the robot so it can aim and ‘kick’ the ball into the goal perfectly. We work with a robotics lecturer from King’s College London, who’s not only a really interesting person, but is a great teacher which develops our understanding even more.

What do you like about the structure of the school day?

I like that it’s not just the four main subjects in the curriculum. We have extra mentoring sessions and dedicated time with our tutor which is really nice.

Has the school been helpful to you in the UCAS process?

We’ve had quite a few talks from our teachers as well as other organisations, including King’s College London and Student Finance England. We’ve also had sessions on how to create our personal statements, which means we can complete our UCAS forms early and to the best of our abilities.

What subject do you want to study at university?

I’m thinking of studying computer science. I have a programming background, and I just enjoy the work. I like maths too, and there is a lot of maths in computer science, so it looks even more interesting!

What career do you want to go into?

I’m not too sure. I’ve done some work experience at a company called ‘Technology Will Save Us’, who build kits to get people into making stuff. I really enjoyed it so I thought something like that would be nice.