Maths

[ohdearwhatdoidonow]

My son is in Yr8. G&T in a range of subjects including Maths.

He had homework from last week due today and like an idiot he again left it to last night. 50 questions and 70 pages long. I had to help him with writing the answers as he's broken his hand it's in a cast and his left hand writing is illegible. And omg!

I cannot believe the difficulty! Statistical analysis, complex algebra, triganometry, probability. And this was classwork not G&T stuff.(so he tells me)

Is this normal? It scared the life out of me and I'm not bad with Maths?

Sounds like Ks 3 work, but what do you mean by advanced algebra?

Hi not advanced, really bloody complex lol. He's taken his homework in this morning, but the questions for example, would me multiple based questions so the algebra ones would be a 5 part question for example, where you had to answer the 1st equation, which then provided part of the answer to the 2nd question etc.

There were definitely quadratic and simultaneous equations, and something IIRC where he had to expand and then simplify (that's not the technical wording used but that's what he did) and he may have well been talking to me in Chinese.

If he can do it that's all well and good, but I really struggled to help him really.

Any pointers/help for me? He seems pretty self sufficient at the moment, but if/when he struggles - helping him with Maths is not quite as straightforward as helping with History, or English.

To be honest if he's good at maths by Y8/9 he might well be outstripping his parents in terms of what they can remember or the level they themselves got to.

I don't think you need put pressure on yourselves to keep up with him.

The homework does sound a bit long - did he have a long time to complete it? I think ensuring he doesn't leave it until the last minute again is key. I expect the teacher would intend that pupils who struggle could come to them and ask for support before it's due to be handed in. Those who leave it until the last night cannot do this. It also sounds like it needed more than one night to complete it.

Maybe it's time your son worked on his independence and organisational skills as well as his mathematical ones! Perhaps he needs to realise that he has reached the point where his parents won't be able to bail him out at the last minute. It happens to us all!

Hi Schobe - you are completely right, and tbh the only reason I was involved at all in the actual completion was because he couldn't write. He's been exempted from all other non-pc based homework until his cast is off. I think my DS believed this was true of this maths homework as well (which he's had for a week). The homework took 3 and a half hours last night, prolonged because of the weirdness of him doing the calculations etc and me having to write the answers.

I am ashamed to say I was really surprised at the difficulty (my perception). We run Critical Reasoning tests for recruitment at senior manager level, and some of the statistical analysis he had to do was similar to the kind of analysis contained within those tests.

If this is normal work at this level, it puts paid to the criticism that education has been "dumbed" down over the decades. I got an A in my GCE as it was then, and yes it was some time ago, but at that level we hadn't done half of what was contained in this homework.

Same here ohdearwhatdoidonow.

Dd is year 8 and also that g&t rubbish. Her top set maths has stuff like that to do. I can't make head nor tails of it. She had something similar to do last weekend. There were loads of questions. I can't remember doing questions like that at school and i have got maths o level! Being g&t in dd's classes makes no difference. All the top set are classed as g&t even if not registered.