King's Maths School

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

King’s Maths School is a specialised maths school that offers maths, further maths, physics, computing and economics. It’s a maths school for students that like math and are good at math.

What is exciting about King’s Maths School?

I think it’s our curriculum that makes it so exciting, as everyone is doing the same subject at the same time. The structure of teaching is also exciting. The teachers encourage us to find out more. For example, instead of giving us the answer and solution straight away, they guide you to find the answer yourself. 

What do you enjoy about learning here? 

Aside from the curriculum, I enjoy taking part in the extra opportunities the maths school provides to develop our academic and social skills. We have after school clubs and societies, we take part in competitions, and we have the King's Certificate which develops our research and employability skills. The maths school also helped us find summer placements last year, by inviting a maths field coordinator to present different placements available to us. Our teachers spent time helping us identify the best placements for us and completing references for our applications.  

What is your favourite subject to study? Why? 

Maths is my favourite subject. I like the logic of mathematics, and how it can help you structure how you plan your daily routine. I’m also very interested in the application of mathematics in real life situations which is really important. This summer I completed a summer placement at the Centre of Longitudinal Studies (C.L.S.) at University College London, which uses cohort data to analyse relationships between varying factors, such as factors that influence life satisfaction amongst young people (which is what I worked on).

What have the problem solving sessions been like?

They’ve been really interesting. We are given a set of problems and, either individually or as a group, our mentor helps us to solve the problems, challenging us along the way.

Tell me about the sports / exercise you have done at King’s Maths School?

I go to running club. I feel released when I exercise. I like outdoor activities anyway, but it’s especially important to continue with sports and exercise during exam period to help prevent stress. 

What are the teachers like?

The teachers are all so smart! They always try to challenge us, and encourage us to work out the answer for ourselves first. They also go beyond the curriculum; last year when we were taught how to sketch graphs, rather than just teaching us all the graph sketches we needed to know for that specific module, they also taught us how to sketch oblique graphs which is what we will be doing this year.

Do you attend any clubs or societies? 

I went to Robotics Club a few times, and I also went to Bridge Club. At Bridge Club, we have to work together with our partner to beat the other team. You need to have a very good memory, and it gives you the chance to build on your social skills and tactical thinking. In Robotics Club, we built all kinds of stuff using our imagination! The first thing we did was programme a robot to draw a star, which was really tricky. We also did a football match between the robots.

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

We have a mixture of lessons and independent study sessions. It’s definitely important for us to have both, it gives students a chance to go away and solve problems by themselves, but also a chance to come back to their teachers if they need help and more guidance.

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

The school have given us a lot of support during our UCAS applications. We had a lot of people come in and talk to us about what to expect when we make our application, student finance and university life. We also went on university open days, where we had talks from lecturers and current students. It was really useful to learn other student’s experiences. One student talked about how she choose her course based on the different modules that were offered, which made me see how different the same course at different universities can be!

What subject do you want to study at university?

Maths or maths with statistics. I like the application of mathematics, but I’m not sure if just doing pure maths or pure statistics would be right for me...I would like to be exposed to a greater variation of modules and topics. 

What career do you want to go into?

Maybe a career in statistics. Maths is a really useful tool, you can use maths to solve real life problems that may otherwise appear difficult to solve. Linking back to my work experience at C.L.S., we used mathematics to find the factors that may affect people’s life satisfaction, which was used by policy makers to guide new policies and help society.