20% VAT – dumbing down maths!

The life of a GCSE maths author is never easy, and a good deal of effort went into making sure that we included both the 15% VAT rate, when we started writing Longman AQA GCSE Maths, and the 2010 VAT rate of 17.5% when we published the resources.

And now, in the interests of bailing out the bank-bail-out, we  know that from January 2011, VAT will be charged at 20%.

So the delights of realising that 17.5% can easily be found by halving 10% twice (as it were), become less real-life-relevant than we’d like!

And a diverse collection of views is gathering at TES Connect. To paraphrase one comment: ‘If only they understood what a percentage is…’ (Guess they’re talking about students rather than politicians here?)

VAT increase calculator

If you want to start comparing rates and price rises straight away, thisismoney.co.uk is a great website - click for their ready-made calculator!

The really great news, though, is NOT extending VAT to books!!

World Cup Round-up: Summary of our FREE Maths Classroom activities

As we come to terms with England’s defeat at the weekend to Germany (or rejoice at it, depending on your point of view), we thought this would provide an appropriate moment briefly to re-cap the football-themed resources we’ve produced in recent weeks.

In chronological order, with the most recent posts first:

World Cup Maths: The Curse of the Jabulani - 3D shapes and nets

(Seriously, was this prophetic on some level?  Two days after we posted it, England’s crucial 2nd half goal against Germany is disallowed…)

World Cup Maths: The Mathematician’s Guide to Penalty Shoot-outs - Pythagoras, trigonometry, quadratics, probability

UPDATED World Cup Wall Chart: Free to download - Averages, probability, relative frequency

World Cup maths: the route to the Final! - Number skills, distance-speed-time, scatter graphs

(This activity has been the biggest hit with teachers…)

Cup Final Maths – Free resource! - fractions, decimals, percentages

Countdown to the World Cup! - fractions

(…and this one has been the second biggest hit.)