To feel that we may as well have thrown the money away?

[Hedgehog80]

Dd1 was struggling with maths. She has health issues so that's possibly why. A year ago we got a maths tutor for her.
We could only afford once a fortnight and this kept being mentioned but as we couldnt stretch to more we kept it the same.

Tutor seemed good, dd however kept saying he was going over the same things all the time.
He said she would def pass gcse and that she was improving each time.dd maintained she wasn't but I took the tutors word for it.
Very suddenly a few weeks ago the owner of the tutoring group sent a message saying they couldn't tutor dd anymore. Too busy.
They are still advertising though as having spaces?

Anyway, just got dds latest test back and she got a very very low mark, the lowest she's ever got ?? He was so positive and I knowbher health has been bad but I didn't expect this?

We wasted all the money we spent on tutoring didn't we? It was so expensive :(

We are in the same situation with my DD2, who is 18 now and on her second GCSE resit.

Tutors are very expensive and we couldn't afford it before. This year we can, just. We have employed a very well recommended local one. He does seem good and is being very honest with us so a decision will be made in January as to whether or not to continue.

The problem is that my DD just simply doesn't seem to retain maths type information at all yet the government has made a C grade virtually obligatory. We are now in the situation whereby if this doesn't work we will have done all that we can do.

DD1 and DD3 were top set at maths and DD1was relieved to get a good grade and drop it. DD3 is in year10, so GCSEs next year. She currently has the problem that her maths teacher left the school and there have only been a string of cover teachers because of the recruitment crisis. So we may yet have to employ the tutor again for her.

My DDs don't have poor physical health, but I do feel some of your pain re the cost, and also in the case of my DD2, the aptitude of the student for the subject.

We are often caught between the devil and the deep blue sea here.

How painful to have spent so much money for a result like that, OP. I'd be gutted too. Have you thought of trying Khan Academy (totally free) or Conquer Maths (much cheaper than a tutor)? They both have lovely videos explaining maths concepts from the very basic to very advanced topics in a way that is easy to follow. Sometimes maths seems harder than it needs to because of some basic concept that you missed or didn't quite grasp when it was first introduced. Perhaps if your daughter had the tools to help her fill in the gaps for herself she might progress a lot faster.
She might even start to enjoy maths, which would be a bonus!

Poor kid! Surely the priority is to get her feeling stronger and well- sometimes extra pressure of tutoring ( especially in maths if they use different methods) can be counter productive. Also passing on anxiety over results won't help. Agree with all the posts talking about re framing your child's experience with maths - either by doing some more relaxing online stuff or simple workbooks - ignore time pressures and go back a few steps - 14 % means some of the real basics are not yet absorbed so doing other stuff would be like trying to write a novel in Japanese before you even recognise the characters! Ideally if you can find someone young and reassuring who will work through stuff the same way as they do in school ( maybe 6th form maths student wanting pocket money?) but in short and confidence building stages. Good luck.

That is really sad to read. I'm a maths tutor and we teach kids in small classes so the cost per child is much lower. We work hard to ensure each child is making progress, if they really aren't then we'd tell the parent that it wasn't working and suggest other things to try if necessary. Our students have English as a second language too which brings its own difficulties. I do think targeted maths support can really help but the quality of tutoring is very variable I'm afraid.

If your daughter is physically and mentally exhausted then she is in no fit state to be doing extra work in any subject. Her health needs come before her grades. Adding extra tutoring to school is only going to add extra exhaustion and stress. Let her do the basics well again before adding extra work

When they are so exhausted they can't take in the information anyway, so extra tutoring will be a waste of time and money. If she is the one worrying about her grade then I'm afraid that it's your job to reassure her that her health comes first and that her exams can be done at any point.

With school and being ill, it sounds like she's got a lot on without extra tuition for maths. sometimes these things come naturally, sometimes they dont - we all have different aptitudes for different subjects, and that's ok. It doesn't mean she's lazy, or not being taught properly, or there's anything wrong, just some people struggle with maths.I was good at everything except languages, whether however hard I tried, I didn't really progress beyond yr 7 levels.

Personally, I wouldn't worry too much about the maths for now (though don't totally abandon it), and deal with it later, when she's not dealing with other subjects as well. Yes it may slow her down a little, but she sounds like she could do with a little slowing down, considering her health. I worry that too much pressure over maths now will detract from other subjects and put her under more stress, making her health even more precarious.

Sorry if this has been mentioned already, but have you considered maths practice websites? I can't recommend any specific ones except Mathletics as my DCs are in primary but sometimes but I'm sure someone else will (or already has). Mathletics subscription is only £39/year or £25/6 months and your DD can practise any time, at her own pace. In my experience, maths is one of those subjects where practice truly makes perfect. Tutoring, IMHO, would only make a difference if there are chunks your DD struggles to comprehend. But even after something's been explained so she can digest it, she still needs to just keep practising and you don't need tutoring for that.

I am a maths tutor and have been for almost 20 years. [I had to stop teaching in a classroom for health reasons.] The new GCSE syllabus 1-9 grading is MUCH harder than the previous syllabus. Subjects that were an A* or an A on the old syllabus are now on the Foundation syllabus (i.e Frustrums and Vectors).

Considerably more is expected of students than under the old syllabus and there are now 3 GCSE maths exams, rather than 2. They have to learn many more formulae now too, like the Quadratic Formula, which was always on the Formula sheet until now.

I STILL get year 11 students through who don't know their tables and I have to explain over and over again to them and their parents that it is IMPOSSIBLE to pass GCSE without knowing your tables. I still get parents who think that their PFB can do no work the rest of the week and do 45 minutes or an hour a week with me and I will completely make up for a ropey class teacher (they often seem to be PE teachers, rather than maths teachers). This is impossible!

The best results I ever achieved was to get someone from an E to a B at GCSE in 6 months, with 3 lessons a fortnight.

Retaking is nothing to be ashamed of especially in this situation. If you can accept that then make sure she understands that passing all gcses in 2 years is what is expected of healthy students and if if she doesn't then it is not failing but gives you extra time to concentrate on her difficult subjects in the following year. No one will notice / care that she is a year older at college or uni.

If you decide to get her another tutor then listen to her, hindsight is a wonderful thing, if she doesn't think it is helping then it probably isn't.

Dropping the child before the exam is unacceptable, unless they did it with a reason : she is not working.

I would take it up with the tutoring company, especially if the grades are poor. The professional gave you indicators that the child was going well; clearly they don't know what they are talking about: Refund for services not delivered in a professional manner.

Then let your child get well and confident. It's all learning in the end. Don't blame yourself for not having more money. You are doing a good job. Some things in life may take longer if you don't have a silver spoon. 🍰

Hedgehog - I think you are spot on with the need to just back off for a while. Sounds like DD is developing a bit of a "block" in respect of maths. I can sympathise because this happened to me and I struggled with maths throughout my schooling as a result. It wasn't until I was in Teacher training (was strong in all the arts subjects) and in a low-pressure environment that a tutor "lifted the veil" by approaching the subject in a completely different way.
It's not the end of the world if she doesn't get the grade she needs - although that is a long way off. Perhaps part of the problem is that she feels she "must" get better and this is distorting her approach to the subject. A bit of perspective needed, methinks.
If and when a new approach is taken, I agree with PPs about not going for help from "someone who is good at maths"
As a teacher, my weakest suit was probably my teaching of English and I think this was mainly because it came easily to me and I loved it. My maths teaching was, in the end, the part I took greatest pride in and I saw pupils really thrive, as I understood their difficulties so well.

For OP- My Dd got 20% before Christmas on her maths tests. I got her the Aircom GCSE Maths cd-roms £10 for the set and using them every school night she passed with a grade C next summer. These are sold under several names Aircom, Life Software or Times. They are multimedia CDroms and run on a desktop with cd drive, you may have to start them using "run". Look for a piece of jigsaw on the front of the pack. I'm looking to see if there are any left- they contain full course content -not just a revision pack, so if she's missed anything she can do it from scratch. I'll see if I can find any....(because my set is now too precious to part with, sorry)

I have tutored occasionally and I think one of the hardest things is if the student has actually missed large chunks of core information. I tutored someone who had been ill and her main problem wasn't her ability, it was the 6-8 weeks of missing work! The problem may be the same here, if they have maths 3 x a week, that's 6 hours missing information if she's off for two weeks or unable to keep up in class due to tiredness, and a one hour tutoring session can't make up for the 6 missing hours.

I agree with everyone that the key is to keep up with the curriculum perhaps through a small amount of daily online work, and forget any wider pressures if she's exhausted and tired. Her illness will impact her results, that's kind of inevitable, so perhaps focusing on getting good grades on the things that are less effort, then retaking maths the year after may be the way to go. I know it's frustrating, but I have many students over the years with ME/CFS or other chronic illnesses and they have to go slower to reach the same goals, it's not a question of ability just pacing/exhaustion along the way.

I would also say that parents and the children themselves are often very worried about falling behind or becoming 'out of step' with classmates, so they fixate on them going to do A levels or university at the same time as everyone else and are disappointed when they don't. But it's ok to get to the same goal, but just a little slower. I think it's actually better for young people with chronic illnesses to have fewer but the same standard goals (e.g. get 5 good GCSEs this year, retake Maths and do others next year) because if you try to hold them to the same standard as everyone else, it simply isn't their fault they can't meet it or put in the extra work to catch up. I have students at PhD level with CFS- they can do it, but they have to work differently and accept the pacing is slower and that can be hard to accept.

I think you have 2 issues here, the main one being that she may well not be well enough to get a higher grade. Secondly, with a tutor it needs to be a partnership. I've used tutors at primary and secondary level and I've always kept on top of what the children are learning at school and mentioned to the tutors the areas they are struggling in. I've currently got an excellent maths tutor for my year 6 DD and by keeping an eye on what she's learning at school I can mention what areas she needs support with. Equally my eldest had a tutor in year 8 for English and I liaised with school as to his areas of weakness and passed These on to the tutor. He went from a 5a in old terms to a 6a / 7c in a year with her help and the skills that she taught him meant we saw a similar uplift in history. She was a tutor who did nothing but work in small intervention groups and that made a huge difference.

Amazon have them in software category.

My son is predicted good grades in all subjects (A*-B) apart from maths. He seems to struggle with maths. He is taking the foundation paper so the highest he can get is a C (though new GCSEs this year with be a level instead) he wants to go to Uni. I have read that most subjects at uni he will need a B at GCSE maths. It's just not going to happen.
I decided to pay a tutor for maths every other week. She has just started tutoring so is only charging £15 hourly. I decided it was worth the risk, not knowing how good she will be at tutoring. I think the 1-2-1 with my son has helped, but he still not going to be taking the higher paper as there's so much stuff in there that hasn't been covered at school. It would be impossible for it all to be covered.
So I have accepted my son is not going to get a good enough maths grade. His younger brother in year 8 is getting a higher sats grade (still using the old grades) than his older brother ever got, but the older brother got higher grades for other subjects. So we are all different. Some people are good in one subject and not others. I do think some people have a natural mathematical brain.

I just think that some people expect miracles when they hire a tutor.
If a child has spent eight years or so at school and still hasn't grasped basic mathematical concepts, I really don't see why one would expect a tutor to make a great difference in a short amount of time.
If ones dc has problems with the subject, this should have been addressed much earlier.
Tutoring is beneficial if the child, parent and tutor work together .
Some parents think that forking out £20-£30 a week for a tutor absolves them from ensuring that their dc do some additional work.

I wasn't expecting miracles. The truth about progress would have been a start though .....
I feel misled and very irritated that we were just dropped.

A private tutor has worked wonders for our ds9, he has HFASD and cannot focus in group situations. The progress has been amazing, we get dla for home so we use that to pay the £25 paw fee. It makes me think that the school could do more to help him as he is a very bright boy but has difficulty socializing etc. He was so far behind when he started and now does almost age related stuff.

It's all a bit silly. Why sisn't there a functional Maths exam that sits alongside GCSE so you can prove that you are numerate.

Unis can still expect a decent GCSE pass to demonstrate an all-round education, but most employers should be happy with a numeracy qualification.

A lot of people who "can't do Maths" are quite numerate. Not being able to do quadratic equations or get your head around circle geometry is not a problem at all for most jobs.

I think Lovelyskin talks sense.
I have CFS and you just can't do it when you are ill. Health has to come first. Without health you have nothing. It seems best chance of recovery is intensive rest early in the illness. Certainly the opposite of that, to keep pushing yourself for as long as you can until you utterly collapse, so many people have done that and regret it. So many people say I wish I had rested in the beginning.

At the end of the document there is a two page Letter To Educators.
"In the past there has been too much emphasis on returning the child to school as quickly as possible. This strategy has failed because the fast paced school environment is too demanding, even on a part-time basis, and in many cases it has caused the child’s fragile health to spiral downward"