To want to quit my social work course rather than have to deal with getting a level 2 in mathematics?

[filee777]

I went in today to do my diagnostic at TABS and it was horrendous, I didn't know anything and got a really poor score.

More than that, it made me anxious and nervous and like I was a big steaming pile of shit with no hope in hell of ever achieving anything.

I don't want to go back for the week course, can I buy level 2 certificates online or something?

feeling crap

You can do it. It took me 5 attempts but I got there in the end and if I can do it, you definitely can!!!

Woah there, I just want to clarify that I have an enormous collection of (admittedly mostly pointless) qualifications including a HND2 in photo media, so I am comfortable with going back to uni, it's only been a few years since I've been in education and have done lots of courses.

It's just maths, I'm crap at maths :(

One other option could be a learndirect course. It's pretty much e learning so that may be of help considering your schedule re children. You're able to learn at your own pace at home or at a learndirect Centre, where there will be tutors on hand to help with things you may find particularly difficult. I don't care much for maths, however I completed the level 2 course which counts as an equivalent gcse.
Good luck with everything.

Hi, you mentioned not being good at times tables. You can now buy CD's set to music, so if you like singing or have to be in the car for any length of time could put these on. every little helps. Best of luck!

If you are willing I want to see if it is possible to slay or slow down the "I am crap at maths" dragon. If anyone else mathily inclined wants to tell me I'm spouting rubbish, please do .

Watching someone else do maths can feel like watching a lego house being built, straightforward, easy, one brick on top of the other until bingo - nice tidy house made of maths.

Then you try to do the same thing and the bricks turn into an assortment of oranges, nuts and bolts, kittens and amphibious piranhas.

What maths is really like is a collection of artworks from about ten different centuries. Some of it is easy to make sense of and other bits completely incomprehensible unless you have lots of special knowledge.

Lots of things you might need to be able to do with maths don't make sense you just have to learn a technique like memorising a password or the WW2 spies that memorised poems to send coded messages (coding is maths).

As you are probably a logical and sensible person when you come across bits of maths that don't make sense you might accidentally think you are not good at it rather than the explanation or instructions you have got aren't very good.

So you are not crap at maths, there are just some bits you haven't got the right techniques for which includes the thinking techniques to stop your brain seizing up with horror. Not your fault. Unfortunate but solvable.

My excuse is that it is hot and a silly hour but I do love maths and couldn't help myself

TABS is learn direct, I have to be in for a week though, there is no learning around kids it's just a straight week

Yes DH talks about learning techniques too, surely maths is just logical though? Gah I think I just need to take the course and then wing it if/when i fail

Forget about GCSE and forget about maths.

This is numeracy.

This is about the numbers you use every day. It is counting, multiplying, adding up - things you CAN do.

You can practice every day. When you buy a newspaper/magazine work out the change before you get to the till.

This is the kind of thing you need.

And, take this course, but every adult education centre/FE college is running Level 2 courses. They are free if you do not have one so you can sit your functional skills at the end of your week long course and then go down the road to another place offering a course and sit a different level 2.

Multiplication is a quick way of adding lots of things, division is a quick way to 'take away' lots of things.

I don't suppose you are in the Midlands, I'm getting withdrawal from not teaching numbers.

I am totally maths phobic.

I was doing an access to Health and Social Care course.

The tutor was a bit rubbish at teaching maths. She got her manager in to teach it. She was also a bit rubbish and realised that when I was teaching her how to work out VAT.

She then got a proper maths tutor two hours a fortnight to teach us. We had him for 5 weeks, so he could teach us the remaining modules, so GCSE equivalent. I passed the one exam we had with 92%. I passed the whole maths.

You can do it with a decent teacher.

Having gone from a rubbish maths phobic to getting an A Level and some Uni Maths courses under my belt I can tell you for certain that you're not crap at maths!

Its acceptable to say you can't do maths in this country and so many people have convinced themselves that it is hard and they can't do it that it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy.

If you're of normal intelligence, have no conditions such as dyscalcula, can count, understand addition, subtraction, multiplication, division and can follow and remember instructions then you're more than capable of getting a good GCSE grade and beyond.

Maths is nothing to fear its just numbers and you have to get yourself past that. You can learn it and it's a total revelation when you do.

You must go back to the very beginning though and fill in little gaps in your knowledge. Many people are lacking some of the basic rules, BODMAS is a big one - there is even a whole thread in classics showing how many lack this simple and basic rule, it's these gaps that can make maths incomprehensible. I bought the learn at home books (CPG or is it CGP - am on phone so can't check are really good) but you must start from key stage 1 and work through from there. You'll race through in no time filling in the blanks.

A great way to improve your maths dramatically is to work on your mental maths. That means learning those times tables by rote until you know them inside out. It increases your confidence with numbers and makes other operations quicker as you already know that 6 x 12 = 72 for example and don't need to waste time thinking. I also started to add up my shopping cost in my head. Start off with rounding to the nearest pound then the nearest 10 until you can do it to the penny. Wherever you can abandon a calculator and do it in your head or using a pen and paper. It is really effective so don't skip this step.

It has lots of benefits. I know exactly how much my shopping will cost when I get to the checkout. I can instantly work out how much of something I will need and which offer is the best deal. I also won £100 and convinced people that was a genius mathematician with my ability to find the square root of 4 digit perfect squares instantly, its nothing special just following 2 simple rules using maths taught at primary school.

I did it and you can too. Its so liberating to be good at maths and it does put you head and shoulders above others while increasing your self confidence dramatically.

Good luck with the course.

You can do it! I too am crap at maths, though not for lack of trying - numbers just don't "stick" in my head, so I have to carefully and methodically write everything down if I want to be even close to right. Though I tried to divide something the other day and just couldn't get it to come out right

However, even with my crapness, I managed to scrape a C at GCSE level - all you need to do is know what sort of thing will be on the exam, and work at getting the techniques to do them.
TBH most of the stuff you do on these courses is pointless, and you will never use it beyond the exam. Focus on learning the method, and you'll be fine.

That said, I wish I could do the things ChipsNKetchup mentions, like knowing how much your shopping is at the checkout! That would be handy

BTW how you multiplied the 15 lots of £1.05 is how I do most maths quickly, break down the chunks and stick em back together at the end. It shows you've got the right way of thinking already which is half the battle.

You can do it too galaxy! I'd start doing those times tables by rote and it will begin to stick. It is just numbers, if you can remember other things you can remember them. They're nothing unique to be feared.

I went from a GCSE grade E and not having done maths without a calculator in 14 years to an A* GCSE in a year. If I can do it anyone can.

As everyone else says you can do it, you just need a good teacher. Please keep at it, I have first hand experience from the last week of the difference a good SW can make.

They were obviously impressed with you and feel you will make a good SW and this country needs people like you in these roles. At the end of the worst week of my life to date , I can honestly say without the lovely lady I have been dealing with about my Mum, I think I would have gone under and not be coherent this morning.

Do your local college offer a skills for life course?

It will cover level 1&2 maths, I have a huge fear of numbers and if there is such a thing a dyslexia for numbers I most certainly have it. I come out in a cold sweat at the thought of math.

Anyway, even with all that I passed my level 2 in about a month, it was easy and the groups were so small the tumour was able to sit with me and really try several different techniques to learn what I needed to get the pass.

I can't say I remember any of it now but I got the levels I needed, they're the equivalent of an A-C grade GCSE.

Yabu. Give it a go rather than give up.
You can do it!!

Hi I have just taken my level 2, there are 3 papers in one exams the skills you need to work on are, Mean, Mode, Range and median, percentages, handling data so putting data in to graphs, how to work out area, perimeter and volume, scale drawing and that was the main points in pretty much all of the practice papers, the questions are now based on things you will encounter in real life, like working out how to lay a patio, or working out tax and NI on wages. BBC skill wise have excellent bitesize revision and this was where I practiced - I did mine over 6 weeks and I passed, but getting hold of some practice papers helps.

Just had a look at udacity, lots of good courses but no beginner maths sadly. bbc learning do one though, looks like the basic skills
Good luck!

I had to do the numeracy test for teaching and found this book really helpful:
www.amazon.co.uk/Numeracy-Tests-Dummies-Lifestyles-Paperback/dp/1119953189
It is available in local libraries.

kyz thank you that's really helpful.

I'll focus on studying those areas from my revision book

Just popping by to wish you loads of luck. SW is such a hard course to get on and you have done brilliantly - just one more big push and you are there :-) I presume there won't be much maths on the course itself? I am starting midwifery in Sept and had to get GCSE grade B as maths is so important with drug calcs etc x

My friend who is a social worker in the town I want to study is sure there is next to no maths. It just seems to be a box they like to tick!

It was really hard, I fluffed the interview a bit too as I got an email that I stupidly read at 4am on the morning of the interview from my estranged mother.

But they must have seen something they like.

I work in home care at the moment and did a few months with a supported living home for teenagers a few months ago, so the smattering of experience probably helped.

Hi,
I recommend the following sites to get you started. Have a look at www.bbc.co.uk/skillswise
and www.gcflearnfree.org

Try to get a handle on Laws of Indices as it comes up in so many topics.
mathematics.laerd.com/maths/indices-intro.php

Good luck.

There is maths everywhere. You just don't realise it because it's not stripped down to the purely mathematical elements.
You may never need to work out the missing side of a triangle using Pythagoras' Theorem but I bet you you'll have to do some kind of data handling and percentages etc.
The more you practise the better you'll get, I promise!

Hopefully you can try and come up with easy ways to remember all the terminology.
I told my niece that for mean, median and mode she just had to remember that 'a la mode' means really fashionable, so that's the one you'll spot the most often. For median think of a comedian standing in the middle of a variety show line up and mean is really mean and nasty because you have to add up all the figures and then divide by the number of figures to get the mean and nasty average.