How Much Is One GCSE Mathematics Mark Worth?

Consider two otherwise equally matched youngsters taking their GCSE Mathematics exams.
The first gets the grade they are after and the second, perhaps even after a re-sit, just fails to do so.
The grade in question may be a grade 'C', which is generally regarded as the grade necessary to go on to further and higher education or to get into a large number of career jobs in many professional fields. It may be a B or A that is required to study a course that involves more mathematics such as engineering, electronics, finance or architecture.
The young person who fails to get the required grade may get a job working on a building site, eventually become a builder in their own right, buy lots of houses and make a fortune in the property business.
Or they may become a world famous footballer.
But we know that, in reality, this very rarely happens. What is much more likely is that the one who gets the grade they want will develop their professional career at a much faster pace than the other and will soon be on a much higher salary.
Let's take a look at the effect of that salary difference. Staying on the conservative side, we can safely say that, on average, the salary difference will be a minimum of GBP 2,000 per year, which over a working life of, say, thirty five years, totals GBP 70,000.

Due to the changes currently taking place with pension arrangements in the UK, the working life of youngsters today could well be much more than thirty five years.

The GBP 70,000 average is therefore an absolute minimum.
So, back to those GCSE marks.
If the youngster who failed to get the grade they needed missed by seven marks, that's GBP10,000 per mark! If they missed by two marks, that's GBP 35,000 per mark and (you've guessed it), if they missed by just one mark, that's a whopping GBP 70,000 per mark! It's quite an eye opener, to say the least, and in my thirty years of teaching this subject, I have never come across a teaching who has explained the difference in such graphic terms.

But where do times tables fit into all this? Taking even a cursory look at the content of the various syllabuses reveals that a great number of topics involve a good knowledge of tables, beginning with any form of multiplication or division of whole numbers or decimals and progressing to percentages, fractions, data manipulation, expanding or factorising algebraic expressions, calculating angles and calculating areas and volumes.
A good knowledge of times tables can make a huge difference to the number of marks obtained in the examinations and with each mark worth so many thousands of pounds, it would be insanity to study mathematics at any level without a sound knowledge of these important multiplication facts.