‘Impossible’ GCSE maths question that stumps all parents as well as kids

Maths has a bad reputation for one of being the most difficult subjects students have to study. Well, if you hate calculations look away now, as Save My Exams has discovered a GCSE question parents struggled to answer

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Every year GCSE students claim their exams are getting harder and harder – often leading parents to grumble about how things were “back in my day”. But it turns out the teenagers might be on to something, based on new research from Save My Exams, who recently challenged parents to complete a GCSE maths question.

Shockingly, 100% of them failed. Of course, it is unreasonable to expect students to pass every question in their exam papers. But the challenge goes to show just how difficult the tests can be – and how much kudos kids deserve. It also revealed that parents might have some revision of their own to do.

Parents were left stumped after trying to answer the GCSE maths question (stock photo) (

Image:

Getty Images)

Surprisingly, the trick question failed to dint parents’ confidence, despite their poor results. Of the 1,000 parents quizzed, 92% were unable to answer the question and 8% failed to get the correct answer. Yet, an average of 75% of these parents still believed they could pass their children’s exams. One in two did (52%) admit they don’t always understand the homework questions their children are set, though.

The GCSE maths question that the parents failed shows a shape with all its measurements in centimetres, where the area of the shape is A cm² and respondents are asked to show that A = 2x² + 24x + 46.

100% of parents quizzed failed the question (stock photo) (

Image:

Getty Images)

Thankfully, Save My Exams’ maths lead Lucy Kirkham has worked out the answer for anyone left stuck by the question. Sharing advice, Lucy said: “Seeing questions with loads of Algebra can be scary but breaking them down into smaller chunks will help you work through them more easily.

“Our maths experts at Save My Exams create colour-coded model answers which break down each question into easier steps to carefully guide users to the correct answer.

Most parents did not know how to answer this question

“This question gives you the answer you’re working towards, which can sometimes be off-putting as you wonder ‘How am I ever going to get there?’. Don’t let it worry you, just try to start with the first step and you’ll surprise yourself with how far you can get!

“Even if you don’t get all the way through, marks are awarded for different stages of your working so you can always try to pick up some marks and use our model answers to see how you’d pick up the rest.”

A mathematician shared the answer

It is not just maths that confuses parents, however, though it ranked as the worst subject. According to the research by Save My Exams, parents struggled the most with Maths (53%), followed by Science (35%), Spanish (30%), French (29%) and English Literature (27%).

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