Primary school DC can’t do basic Maths

[Cocacolathanks]

Hello wise Mumsnetters,

Three DC in Year 2, Year 4, Year 6.

Since last year, I’ve realised they’re not doing great in Maths and English. They’re all in “top sets” (basically sometimes the teachers split the class into two groups for kids that need extra support or booster sessions etc) and all parent meetings come with excellent feedback.

I’ve suddenly started paying way more attention to their actual work (because my eldest is doing tests and stuff now in prep for SATs) and I am utterly shocked.

Year 6 kid can barely count time/money/fractions - even struggled with column division!

Year 2 kid is still young enough to get by on the basics but Year 4 kid is also struggling with Maths but doing ok in English.

The main issue is Maths - it’s shockingly weak. I feel like I put too much confidence and dependency on the school and didn’t do my part.

How do I fix this? Where do I even start?

CGP Books? Online sessions? Print out the curriculum and start from scratch???

Help oh wise Mumsnetters 🥹❤️

Crucially, I would not do anything that is going to make them start to dislike maths or feel negative about it (like enforcing long extra study sessions). This can definitely do more harm than good!

Number fluency is a great place to start, especially for the younger ones. Online games, resources like 'times table rockstars' or tutoring programmes like 'Kumon maths' (many other options out there) might be good.

For your Yr6 if they are open to revising together then that's great. Maybe they would like a workbook to go through with you. You could have a phone call with the teacher to get more of a feel for their strengths/weaknesses.

But if by column division you mean long division, most my most recent Yr6 class struggled with it! Recognising time, money, fractions perhaps more basic - but if you're talking more about solving problems with these, they are not easy skills. With a good foundation in number fluency, they have plenty of years of studying maths ahead of them so don't panic :)

Imho parents evenings these days are poor. Unless your child is difficult behaviourally, they will say lots of positive things about them, none of which give any indication of their aptitude, attainment or relative progress.

If they refer a lot to expected levels, your child is distinctly average.

About 54% of pupils will get a 5 or above in maths. If your child is slap bang in the middle of the class, they are on track for a 4 or 5 at best.

Most people don't realise their childs ability or attainment level because schools are so overwhelmingly positive about all children these days.

Surely the first thing you should do is make an appointment to speak to their teachers? Especially the Yr6’s teacher & put you concerns to them. You don’t want to start introducing new maths concepts or techniques as that might confuse them.

For the year 6, go through the entire curriculum and cover it together. That way you won't waste time on stuff they do actually know. White Rose used to break the curriculum down really nicely and provide explanations, examples and practice questions. Kids are always shit with time but don't try to teach it. Get them a watch with hands for Christmas and do it that way. Same with money, don't try to teach it. Get them using money regularly in real life.

Specifically for SATs, you could ask their teacher which years SATs papers they will be using for their mocks. Then you can look at other years (available free online with answers and mark schemes) to see what to expect from the questions. I did this.

For the other 2 kids, just keep up with and practice whatever topics they are currently working on in school.

I would go back to basics as "revision" and start there.
One on one means that he should hopefully be able to pick it up quick enough if you give him an hour an evening as a priority.
Loads of praise and positive reenforcement.
I agree with the only say positive things may have gone too far.
Every week my children had maths and spelling tests on a friday which were sent home to be signed, so we always knew e exactly where they were on every topic.

They do bus stop division these days.

so yeah, column division may well have confused your child.

white rose is pretty good, they have parent books and it’s fairly consistent with the way most schools teach it.

I've experienced this and we had to get a tutor to go back to the beginning and whizz through to plug the gaps .

There are lots of maths based games that don't feel like maths - from basics such as shut the box to more complex games such as mobi, which is like scrabble but with numbers!

Rather than trying to do extra homework, look to add maths in to every day - eg if we are buying three tins of beans at 69p, how much is that all together? If we use 2 eggs for 12 cupcakes, how many so we need for 24 cupcakes?

The more you do it, the easier it is- much like reading everything, which seems more natural to most.

What have their reports said? Are they meeting expectations or not?

I would definitely find a tutor: ideally one who knows how to make it fun

I have 3 boys. I find mathletics online programme good and the boys don’t mind doing it with me. I can keep a fair idea of how they’re doing.

If their school does White Rose maths, there is a homework book you can get for about £5 on Amazon. The school gave them the book for year 5 and 6, but we bought for our youngest from year 2 abd oldest from year 3, to help re cap

Do they do maths boosters? our school does 'morning maths' - children come in 40 mins early 3 times a week to go over maths concepts in small groups with year group teachers, runs for every year group 3 to 6.

I highly recommend the cgp daily books. It’s aligned to the curriculum and difficulty gradually increases through the book.

Are you sure they're as weak as you are worried they might be?

You've not been worried about them until now, and you say you 'suddenly' paid attention.

It could be you are misremembering what it looks like for a normal child of that age to take time to work out a bit of maths.

It could also be that you fell back on asking a question in a way that wasn't familiar to them, and they struggled.

It is totally normal for a child in Year 6 to find some fractions tricky. They might answer very differently if you phrased things differently. My DD is in year 5 and I am constantly kept on my toes.

You could, of course, get a tutor to hot-house your child, but perhaps before that, talk to the teacher and see what's what?

I very much doubt that your children are struggling as much as you appear to think. Maths is now taught very differently from the way it was when you were at school. Talk to the teacher, have a look at some online revision sites with your child and then you will have a better idea of how they have been taught to tackle the questions.

Just to put it into perspective, Y6 DC got 10/40 in a Maths test yesterday after being “top set” and “so good at Maths that they help some of the other kids!”

Also of course I wouldn’t look at just one test to make my judgement - basically over the summer I did work/extra prep with the kids and realised half the stuff on the national curriculum they were unable to do.

I spoke to the teachers and other than the Y4 teacher saying DC needs work on times tables, the others were very surprised I even asked 😅

I won’t go too heavy handed but I’ll be taking on some of your suggestions. I know kids take their time to learn etc but really… struggling to do column addiction and subtraction (mixed it up with division before sorry) in Y6 seems worrying to me.

Even long division and a lot of word problems, it’s like the questions don’t make sense to the kids? I just wonder if I’m taking it too lightly and then they’ll end up struggling in secondary.

We already use Times tables Rockstars, IXL Maths and Numbots.

A massive thank you for ALL the suggestions and support so far ❤️❤️❤️

My older two DC are very quiet children and the “well behaved” ones who don’t cause much noise or fuss in class, which makes me wonder sometimes if they get overlooked (not blaming the teacher at ALL, honestly it’s a bloody tough job!) and things might get missed this way.

They just about meet the bare minimum on most days probably and aren’t maybe weak enough to cause massive concern, so they just trod along but then concepts get confused and forgotten. I really think they need some 121 time with me.

I had a temporary tutor for 2 months over the summer for DC Year 6 and even the tutor was shocked at how they struggled with some “basic stuff” on the curriculum. They did some work over the summer to get some basic concepts going but it’s not something I was able to financially commit to for any longer which is why I want to take responsibility for some home learning.

Private tutoring is great for confidence, fluency, practicing tricky methodology etc. My year 6 DD has had it since year 2 and she’s found it so helpful.

Ah sorry OP- just saw your latest post about affordability. I think the suggestion of online maths programmes and gentle guidance at home is great. I’m a poor teacher to my own kids so you’ve got that advantage if they’ll listen to you (mine won’t when it comes to homework!).

I remember struggling with maths though I was in top set- realistically the bottom of top set. My uncle , who was an accountant tried to help me- confused me further! At least now there are loads of resources. Do u remember being good at maths? Are you comparing what they can do with what you were able to do? I'd start with the teacher as first point of call.

Schools seem so blase about this sort of thing, I was worried about my daughter in year 4 because I realised how terrible her writing and reading was compared to other kids her age. At parents evenings they'd always just said "she's doing really well" and never reported any issues. When I dug a bit deeper I asked for a meeting at school and they brought her school books for me to look at, I had to point it out to them that she had spelt every single word in the dates and titles wrong even though they were directly copied from the board. The teacher then said "oh I see what you mean, sorry I haven't had much chance to look at their books" it was March!

Anyway in the end she got assessed externally and we had a teams meeting. The assessor asked the teacher what year my daughter was working at and it was over 2 years behind her actual school year! I have no idea when they would have bothered to tell us this had I not pushed for it.

Time and money are both topics where children’s ability has plummeted over recent years, mainly because these were always things they learnt at home and only needed light-touch teaching in schools. Children nowadays rarely wear analogue watches or buy things using coins and this has definitely had an impact.
Long division is often taught in Y6 Autumn 2, so your Y6 may not have learnt this yet.
By all means, go over your children’s learning at home to help consolidate but I’m not convinced from your post that the teaching is as poor as you say it is.

Children often struggle to work out how to solve a maths problem. They can do any amount of computation but can't see which computation to use for a Maths problem.
Perhaps try asking them to make up a question for an answered computation.You would need to model it first
Give them e.g. 15 + 6 = 21. How many stories can they think of around that?
'There were 15 children on the school bus then 6 more got on. So there were 21 children on the bus when it set off.' etc, etc. The stories can be as silly as you like and really the wordier the better.

I would start with buying an A3 mini whiteboard and low stakes reinforcement of a topic for ten minutes a day. Start with fractions - take it one skill per day within the topic.

Our son has always struggled with maths. I put it down to the period of time in his early primary school years he missed out on valuable foundations of maths during COVID and learning from home but I keep hearing more and more about kids at school struggling with basic maths I'm beginning to wonder if it's actually the schools and their curriculum or their teaching practices.

Anyway we've basically had to hire a tutor to help out our son since year 5. He's in year 9 now and still uses the tutor we can't really afford but at least he's keeping up with expected assessment levels.