Maths help

I don't think you need to have a PhD in maths research to be able to challenge a class of bright Y8s!

It's true that I would be out of my depth in trying to get someone through the higher Olympiad rounds, but that's why UKMT assign email mentors for these students (if you know to ask for them).

Please don't assume that comp teachers are all mathematical dullards.

I didn't say that they were. It is however factually correct to say that comp maths teachers are less likely to have participated in maths Olympiads as kids, and have PhDs in maths related subjects, than maths teachers at the handful of top private schools. As an academic in maths, I know personally maths teachers from the schools already named in the thread as they used to be PhD students/postdoctoral researchers in my department. They have many advantages in catering for the very brightest students (but might not be very good at teaching those who struggle at maths, I've no idea about that).

Why more don't go isn't because of the internet, it's because they are held at the university (transport costs would automatically rule out PP kids), because they are held at the weekend and kids don't want to give up their weekends to do school stuff, and because kids have other stuff on at the weekends, or their families do so they can't get there.

Yes, exactly: posters shouldn't compare maths with sport/music because kids/families are willing to give the weekends for the latter but not for extension in maths. (BTW in at least some places grants for transport are available for PP kids.)

I agree with you but on the other I think well why the heck do I bother sending him to school.

My DD (primary) learns English maths etc at school. However she also learns about how to be within a community, how to work with the needs of all the community members. She learns about friendship (both good and bad). She is listed as gifted in English and spends half hour a week mentoring a younger student who finds it hard. If heard one of her mates complain they are bored: DD comes home and tells me about how so and so found something really hard or she got a silver card from the teacher for helping out. School is about so much more than maths and English.

they have the ability to do so much more at such a higher level and they end up being dragged down to a standard.

No no no... Attainment is not limited by your achievement at school. You can choose to work ahead outside of school. You can choose to study beyond what you are taught. All too often we teach our children that school need to be challenging them it's schools fault you are bored and you don't achieve.

There's no personal responsibility for attainment. This is so harmful compared to a couple of hours boredom a week

Yes in an ideal world it is what all teachers strive for that every child achieves to the top limit if their ability in fantastically interesting style. But that is an ideal world

I spent 4 weeks addressing and stuffing envelopes 9-5.

I've had jobs where I've filled papers for afternoons straight.

I earned a lot of respect from employers and employment agencies for doing so without complaint.

Coming out of education I had an awesome CV. One of the first things employers asked was "not all the job is exciting how do you deal with boredom?"

The answer is not, I let it affect who I am and develop alienation, PTSD and self hatred.

Putting it into context. Your child might have 4 hours a week maths in a state school. A teacher will usually have a fun starter activity for 10 mins of a class, 15 min-20mins explanation 30mins work. Assuming your DC grasps the concept and finishes the work in half the time allowed (and I am also assuming your child is diligent and does finish the work), that leaves them a grand total of just 2 hours a week to be bored in maths.

Say you allow one hours screen time a day after school. If you cut that in half and spent that time doing fun maths they find interesting. They would have more time doing fun maths and screen time than they would spend being bored in maths. It is a matter of perspective.

If they are spending more time than that bored in class they are either not listening to the teacher or underestimating the value of practice.

Boredom is a really important part of life; sometimes it is also an annoying unavoidable part of life. Learning to deal with it while keeping a hang on who you are is a really important life skill.

Toffeelatteplease: yes, children absolutely are harmed by being bored. Agree with most of the rest of what you say, but emphatically not that. Being bored in class is not like being bored in the holidays, when the child can just go and find something to do. Being bored in class, even for not that long each time but each and every week for years, and not having, or feeling they have, the means to alleviate it, can lead to lifelong problems from alienation to perfectionism to self-hatred to what looks very like PTSD. Struggling with boredom in class is every bit as bad as struggling with lack of comprehension. Please don't minimise it.

Of course, ideally all children would have the executive function and impressive negotiation skills to extract themselves gracefully from such a situation, but not all do and it's not on to blame them or their parents for it.

I also think helping other students who are struggling is massively important and underrated.

It is most definitely not a one way street as many people dismiss it as. It is the best way of deepen mathematical concept understanding and identifying gaps in your own knowledge. It is also fantastic for social learning. It is good to see other people's struggles and learn how to deal emphatically. It is also an important lesson in the value of volunteering.1

As an alternative extension exercise along these lines consider suggesting to your DS mentoring. Giving up an hour or two after school a week to help someone who is struggling.

Some schools set this up as a school program.

I always see why aren't school doing? And I find myself thinking if it's such a big problem why not just get on with it?

A maths text book doesn't cost a mammoth amount. Many contain fantastic examples coupled with the you tube there is no reason a bright lad can't a couple of hours a week work it through himself, or if you can get a tutor for a couple of hours a week there's half a chance they will be better qualified mathmatically than many schools are able to recuit.

I did A level maths alongside my other a levels in my own time (not top grades just enjoyed it, wasnt keen on the maths teachers for a level). I'm doing a degree in Maths ou for fun now, I see a tutor once every 6 weeks maybe. Teaching isn't always an essential part of learning.

Alternatively/additionally this website had an absolutely fantastic assortment of excellent maths activities designed to deepen mathematical understanding and thinking. When I taught maths I often used them as my extension for bright pupils. If your son's teacher hasn't heard of them, it might be worth asking if your son can do them after he's finished his set work.

As an aside sometimes it is worth checking with the teacher. I had one child who mum was on the war path at parents evening and whose child was too bright for the class, I had to show her the books before she believed me that actually he'd done the barest minimum, because "it was too easy", then messed around. The other children in the class had moved onto a fantastic and rather good fun extension activity. It is absolutely worth checking in with the teacher, firstly so they know the entension activities aren't working for your child but also so ypu make sure you have the whole picture.

FWIW even if it may look like more of the same sometimes it can be because it is but with more challenging numbers sometimes there are some very subtle ways of making work more challenging. Not saying that is always the case but sometimes it is.

There is fantastic benefit to encourage children to taking responsibility for their own learning. There's too much expectation that if it's boring it's the schools responsibility to solve the problem. Your child isn't actually harmed by being bored. Many jobs are boring or have boring aspects how to deal with that is a useful life skill. Given our school system is "free" and therefore has to accommodate large size classes i am at a loss why a child's boredom should have more call on a teachers time than a child who is struggling and whose future prospects are severely limited with they don't get it. There are alternatives: home school and private, but all have there advantages and problems.

In short Teaching your child to be proactive and take responsibility for themselves their own learning is one of the most fantastic life lessons you can give them.

hayita Please don't assume that comp teachers are all mathematical dullards, top set at a highly selective school is going to be very different to a top set at a comp which would make that group approach viable.

But did you look at the link I posted? It's clear that at some schools there is lots of Olympiad coaching. The UKMT mentoring scheme is a provision of resources specifically to coach kids for the Olympiad!

Our local uni runs weekend maths masterclasses for Y8. We usually get one or two kids who go. Why more don't go isn't because of the internet, it's because they are held at the university (transport costs would automatically rule out PP kids), because they are held at the weekend and kids don't want to give up their weekends to do school stuff, and because kids have other stuff on at the weekends, or their families do so they can't get there.

I had exactly the same problem with DS1. Came up against a brick wall with school. It was an average comp and I got the impression they were delighted to have a quiet pupil who was guaranteed A*s in maths and they were unwilling to put any effort into stretching him. I suggested UKMT / FSMQ to no avail.
In the end I gave up on maths and got DS to concentrate on improving his performance in other subjects which were not so easy for him. He was bored in maths lessons for a couple of years but continued to read and absorb Maths and Physics books at home, along with watching Youtube lectures.
A level maths at Sixth form college was all new for him and he whizzed through it with fresh enthusiasm. This is one very good reason to avoid advancing the curriculum and to try instead to explore stuff that's off curriculum. Otherwise he will be equally bored at A level, and while he may still find it easy at least he will have something to learn. DS is now doing a Maths degree at a top uni and in his element.

At the time I didn't know what else to do. When you've begged the school for help and failed and you are not a mathematician yourself, it's hard. I think that DS thinks I should have done more, especially now that he know just how much maths there is. Even after a four year degree there are areas he has barely scraped the surface of.

I don't see how the solution is more maths or harder math. If anything, he is too used to only getting satisfaction from a narrow subject & needs to broaden out what he can do in many areas. Ultimately that will give him lots more choices for what he can do with maths ability, too.

Math is what, 4.5 lessons a week? How bad is the rest of his school experience that he gets no joy from the other 25 hrs/week in school.

Plus life has boring moments. I work with mathematician PhDs & they really don't spend all their time proving that you can't comb all the hairs on a tennis ball the same way (& cleverer things). They have loads of repetitive boring standard math things to do, too, never mind the admin or getting trapped in the same aimless meetings as me.

maths circles are brilliant for those who can get to them - a chance to bounce ideas of like minded people, a place for maths lovers to be totally themselves.

several students from the same school could coincidentally come in the top 50 in the country without having practised lots of similar styles of questions which are nothing like GCSE questions.

But now you are picking up on another issue: at top schools the maths teachers tend to have PhDs/research experience in maths. They don't just teach GCSE to the top set, but teach deeper and beyond. This is true in top schools all the way through: compare a common entrance paper to a KS paper, and see the difference, and then bear in mind that top pupils are taught way deeper than common entrance. I don't think there is lots of Olympiad coaching, but the actual maths lessons are different. Since it's unrealistic to have PhD trained maths teachers in most schools, the only thing which might work is that local schools could send their best pupils to these schools for extension work in maths... in my area this already happens.

BTW upthread it was commented that there are no maths clubs, as there would be sports clubs or out of school music/drama. In a number of cities there have been initiatives to start maths circles/clubs by universities. These would target kids from the age of 14-18, run on weekends and would cost a small fee per session to cover expenses i.e. pay graduate students to help run, pay for use of rooms. Yet as I understand it these initiatives have not been terribly successful, despite considerable efforts to advertise them to local schools (and efforts to target at deprived schools, with offers to waive costs for such pupils). The main reasons for the low uptake are apparently (a) pupils too busy with GCSE/A level/extracurriculars and (b) lots of resources are already available on the internet for extension in maths.

There is coaching in top schools and even offering lunchtime sessions is more that most secondary schools can offer. Many schools have no idea how it works, offering at best the maths challenges, often in suboptimal test conditions. When the occasional kid makes it through to the olympiad, unless they are very proactive themselves, or have teachers who can point them in the right direction of material to work thorough, they have very very little chance of being an olympiad high scorer, especially once into bmo 1.
The mentoring scheme can be really good, but unless people know about it and ask to be on it, they won't get on it unless like noble says, they realise that they can enter the senior challenge early, or if they score highly enough to make it to a summer camp.

I think you are also exaggerating the amount of coaching done by top schools for Olympiads

I disagree, because I've seen pages like this www.drfrostmaths.com/page.php?page=3 and also looking at the Olympaid style questions, there is no way that several students from the same school could coincidentally come in the top 50 in the country without having practised lots of similar styles of questions which are nothing like GCSE questions.

As for the UKMT - to be fair I don't know what their remit is, and I've not really looked at the stuff they send to schools, merely their website, but when I had a really bright student, it was from MNet rather than the UKMT that I found out you could enter students for competitions above their age category and get them assigned a mentor.

mathsmum PE and music departments provide so much extra curricular stuff because they have a very small marking load, exam pressure and exam class sizes compared to a core subject like maths. Schools advertise their sporting results and extra curricular music offerings, but live or die by the their exam results in maths and English, so that's where the effort goes in those subjects.

In terms of peripatetic instrument teachers, and sports tournaments - these exist. They don't for maths!

Also, you're talking like there are large numbers of exceptional students twiddling their thumbs in maths lessons - there aren't. Maths is usually setted and most are catered for by maths and possibly further maths GCSE, maths and possibly further maths A-level.

I'm not sure why you think that sticking bright maths students on their own table with a textbook is ideal. As mentioned above, textbooks are pretty crap.

They run their mentoring schemes, but they make absolutely no effort to ensure that students who would benefit actually access them - it's totally reliant on the interest of the school.

I think this is unfair, in that you are implicitly putting the blame onto UKMT. UKMT simply don't have resources to deal properly with the access issue but saying they make absolutely no effort is too extreme. The access problem is one small part of a much bigger inequality/access issue in schools.

BTW I think you are also exaggerating the amount of coaching done by top schools for Olympiads: as a parent of a DC who attends a school that does very well in Olympiads, I would say that the only "coaching" at that age is a couple of optional lunchtime sessions. The biggest factor in getting the high scores is probably the peer group of very high ability students.

Would it be that hard to stick them on a table with a text book and left to get on with their own thing?

Have you noticed that there aren't really that many maths textbooks these days, and those that exist cover specific curricula? I'm really not sure how handing out a GCSE type textbook would help those who need deeper work.

This was discussed on another thread (about the glass ceiling for gifted and talented children). The problem isn't necessarily the state curriculum for maths, which is perfectly adequate in challenge for the vast majority of children, it's the expectation that the state school system should automatically cater for the minority of students who are exceptional. There isn't this expectation in other subjects - the football-mad talented teenager's PE teacher wouldn't be expected to provide specialised football coaching for his particular skills within a PE lesson. For talented students in football, extra curricular coaching, junior football clubs and so on would be expected to pick up the slack.
The problem is the lack of specialist clubs/organisations intervening, and the lack of any actual guidance about what to do with these students.
The UKMT, like I said, run training camps and select students for international competition, with suitable candidates handed to them on a plate by the maths challenges. They run their mentoring schemes, but they make absolutely no effort to ensure that students who would benefit actually access them - it's totally reliant on the interest of the school.
They recently sent us a list of the top 100 scorers in the Y9 Olmpiad competition. It was dominated by private and grammar schools, with schools like Westminster and Eton having several students on the list. These schools would have coached their students for the competition - normal state comps do not have the resources, nor the amount of top students required to make this viable, but there are no private clubs to do this either.