Help! Need some tips on how to save my DD's maths GCSE

[JenPaul]

Hello lovely mums! Bit of a desperate plea here...My daughter Sophia is in Year 11 and really struggling with her GCSE maths. Her mock results were a complete disaster and I'm worried sick about her actual exams coming up in May.

We've tried Khan Academy videos and those revision guides from WHSmith but honestly, I'm rubbish at explaining anything beyond the basics

Private tutors around here are charging £40-50 per hour which is just not doable right now with everything else going up

Has anyone found anything that actually works? Any affordable tutors in North London or good online resources? Maybe a study group? She's predicted a 5 but really needs a 7 to get into the sixth form she wants.

Didn't want to read and run. I used to tutor primary school children. Sometimes it's about confidence. However a lot of the children struggle because they haven't got good foundation. This isn't their fault, the math curriculum is atrocious in this country. Too much theory and not enough repetition to make concepts stick. My son needs 8 however he is only managing 7 (between playing video games). I will ask him what resources his school uses. You should be able to get it privately, it would be cheaper than private tutoring. I will report later today

You say her prediction is a 5 but what did she get in her last set of trial exams, and was it just one paper? If, eg, it was a non calc paper but she is stronger on calculator paper then she might not be that far off a 7. Keeping her confidence up and avoiding panic will be important.

I would start by talking to her teacher and following their advice. Go through papers and nail down which topics she is struggling with. Is there an online platform the school uses for homework? They often have video explanations you can watch with her.

Tutors often charge less for group lessons than individual lessons.

https://hfleducation.ticketspice.com/hfl-education-gcse-revision-sessions?utm_source=Ticket+spice&utm_medium=HFL+website&utm_campaign=GCSERevisionWorkshops2025

My niece has been doing these online sessions which are £10;a session and you can rewatch as Many times as you want which has helped her with the repetition and confidence building. Tutor rates were beyond my brother but these have been a lifeline. still a chunk of money (niece has been doing the English too) but the watching again has been working and a lot less than a tutor.

Hope the school can help as much as possible too x

If she's on track for a 5 and secure enough in that, then honestly my advice is that she should accept that, work as hard as she can across all GCSEs without panicking about maths, and choose A-Level options that don't require a 7 in maths. Things like Psychology require a good naths grade because there's a lot of staristics and formulae but a child who is naturally a grade 5/6 at maths and was pushed up to a 7 with last minute cramming will not thrive. The students who will thrive are those who are naturally grade 8/9 who might slip down to a 7 if they have a bad day on the exam day.

My eldest uses ^^ https://senecalearning.com/en-GBB^^/^ as her school had access over her GCSE's for some subjects and she wanted to carry on with it for her a-levels. It certainly helped boost her maths from a 3 in mocks to a 5 (predicted 7 throughout). But...

As others have said, if she is achieving a 5, that really is a good passing grade. and pushing herself to a 7 might be achievable, but in reality, is she going to be happy at that 6th form?

She needs a back up plan for if she doesn't get the required grades. My daughter's best friend didn't achieve the required grades for 6th form, and had been predicted higher than my daughter. She's now at the same 6th form college as my daughter and is actually thriving there. She's studying the same subjects 6th form wouldn't take her on for and is getting top grades. My daughter is also getting top grades in her tests.

There is a lot to be said for considering a different option if it's feasible.

You can turn chatgpt into a tutor very easily. I do it all the time for my kids maths homework, reply if you want help with prompts etc.

Get loads if past papers and get her to do them. You can download them. This is the best way to prepare.

What is it she wants to study at A Level? My DD did GCSEs last year. She goes to one of the top state schools in London and also was offered a place at one of the best sixth form colleges. Unless you wanted to do maths A Level or a subject where maths was essential, you didn’t need a 7. You just needed a pass in maths and higher grades in other subjects.
Does she need to reconsider her A level choices?

Tutorful has online tutors that are cheaper but I agree she really just needs to work through lots of past papers and identify what she’s finding difficult. There are lots of YouTube videos for every GCSE maths topic and that’s probably more effective than starting with a tutor at this stage.

My DD was making no progress with revision when following her teacher's advice to 'do past papers'. But when she focused on just one topic at a time, it suddenly all clicked. So worth writing down all the topics and scheduling them for revision one at a time until she's really on top of them, and doing LOTS of past paper questions all on that one topic before moving on. Then, going through each one again, more quickly, one at a time, just before the exam. But past papers that throw everything at you are, in our experience, only a good option for kids who are good at maths. And as a diagnostic once in a while just to check which topics need most work.

This is an excellent website - revision videos, topic specific questions and answers and past papers. My DD has found the videos really helpful for getting her head around the trickier topics. Oh and it’s FREE!!!!

www.mathsgenie.co.uk

Not for maths, but for English GCSE we used mytutor.co.uk- prices range depending on experience of tutor. We now use them for geography ALevel too, my dd tutor is a NQT and £33 an hour but you might get cheaper for GCSEs. To add my daughter has gone up 2 grades since starting , if you find a tutor you dd gels with it’s a game changer ! By the way there is no subscription or tie in so you could just do a few lessons if affordability is an issue? Wishing your DD every success with her exams x

She doesn't necessarily need anyone to 'explain' things to her again. She needs to actively ensure she's revisiting what she knows and practising what she will have to do, so it's in her long term memory. Spacing out and regularly coming back to different topics and checking repeatedly (eg with flash cards) until she can't get it wrong will work. Making pretty resources that don't get used, or highlighting and rereading notes are a massive waste of time.

Practice. Practice practice practice.

Can you get (copies of) her mock exam papers back from school?
Then look at them and see where the mistakes are - topics she doesn't know, simple errors in each question, not reading the questions etc then either get a work book (cgp for example - make sure it is for the right exam board) or old exam papers. If you get a question wrong, you need to do it again (with the answers) to make sure you can get it right.

Corbett maths is much hated, but pretty good for topics she needs help with.

We're using them for maths - DD has gone up three grades since November mocks.

Some state 6th forms are so over-subscribed that they are asking for grades 7-9 in English and Maths as standard even if you don't plan to take them for A Level.

(Ours only has 160 internal Y12 places and 450 students in Y11).