Matching the first year maths curriculum to the abilities of incoming students is a difficult task. In any particular topic it is difficult to know what one can assume as a starting point. Here we describe how tests conducted over the last six years on incoming students can be used to provide a rough and ready guide in this. It was found that these results were quite stable from year to year and between different groups of students with similar grades. There was no evidence of any particular trends or of any affect on the values due to C2000. So averaging over the six years Tables 1 – 4 (see Appendix) give the probable preparedness (pp) values for most of the core Alevel topics in Algebra Functions Geometry and Trig and Calculus for students with grades A-E and (UK) non-standard A-level equivalent N (this is a rather heterogeneous group consisting of HND BTEC Access etc). For example the pp value of 0.3 for partial fractions (Table 1) for grade D students means that if you gave a class of D students a simple partial fractions problem on average only 30% are likely to get it perfectly correct (or 60% ‘half correct’ etc!) quickly efficiently and unaided. In any event you would need to do a considerable amount of revision and maybe even treat the topic from scratch. Of course within any particular grade say B there will be some variation in performance but we hope that this is not too great. In general it does little harm to err on the generous side and assume the worst possible case for the pp values.
