Advice for son15 whose good at maths!

[Moomoola]

Hi, my DS is 15 and seems to be very good at maths, physics and computing. He gets 90+% without revising. Hes doing nat 5 and I wondered if anyone knew how I could encourage him a bit more. Our friends son goes to a posh Edinburgh school where they seem to be really challenged, son is getting bored in class and teachers do et seem to be too on it. We live Edinburgh way.
thank you!

The physics and maths Olympiad www.bpho.org.uk/
bmos.ukmt.org.uk/

Look out for Space School next year
www.strath.ac.uk/engineering/scottishspaceschool/

My son did Higher maths in S4 and it is more challenging than N5, so hopefully he will enjoy maths more next year!
Good luck!

Smallpiece trust is really good and does lots of stuff in stem - it’s very much for making stem accessible to more people (not private schools)

sqa computing science is stupidly prescriptive so it’s not really the teacher’s fault.

Have a look for summer schools - a lot of the universities do these as outreach and amend fees to allow people from lots of backgrounds to attend - smallpiece also signpost to these

as others have mentioned, Scottish maths challenge and tcs/Oxford are interesting

GCHQ sponsors a course over the summer over multiple years about cyber security - it’s really good - I don’t quite understand how you get a place - I think in the past it’s been bebras related.

Take a look at bebras too - it goes all the way through school and it will be right up his street

If you’re in Edinburgh take a look at CoderDojo at Code clan

My son has recently gone through all three levels of the cyber first course (cyber security). It's free of charge and the last one was a residential for a week, the others online due to Covid. He found it extremely fun and stimulating.

Here is the link below. It's first come first served.

www.smallpeicetrust.org.uk/timetable

He also did Bebras through his coding club and qualified for the Oxford University Computing Challenge.

challenge.bebras.uk/index.php?action=content&id=42

He was also awarded on place on Simon Singh's maths masterclasses run by TalentEd.

www.talent-ed.uk/maths-masterclass-tutorials

There's lots to do if you look; he wasn't helped by his school and it was me who found these activities.

Hope this helps!

Yes! That all helps loads, thank you very much! Its like the school is almost afraid of teaching anything.
thank you so much everyone.
he hasn’t much confidence - though he’s proud of being good at stem.
it’s finding a level that encourages without putting him off.
I’ll do some research, but he definitely didn’t inherit this off me!

my son was exactly the same at Nat 5, got over 90% in maths, CS and also chemistry and English.

Higher and then advanced higher will be more challenging. I’d leave it for now til he’s through his Nat 5s and then see what the higher work is like.

Thanks all. I guess he has enough challenges with English - he really struggles. I think maybe because it’s seemingly more abstract.

My DS has similar issues - knocks it out the park on anything stem but I’ve spent ages tutoring him for each English exam, consolidating close reading stuff and trying to explain that ”yes, poets do pick the words on purpose so why do you think they used those ones?”.

some of it is, I think, the abstract nature of it, but in our case he has ASD and really struggles to understand tone and intent in real life, so trying to triangulate that into fiction feels almost impossible.

I’ve read all of his set texts each year so I can talk to him about them - it does help, but I can’t say I’m sorry he dropped English!

Look at the Smallpeice Trust. Focus on developing kids in STEM. Some free events hosted at universities and if you can stretch to it, some residentials in school holidays.

Thanks, chill rains I hadn’t even thought to read his set texts. Bad mother! I’ll look at small piece trust, thank you evelyn Beatrice
he’s currently not revising because he doesn’t see the point. A😳

Some good suggestions here. Our DC enjoyed the Parallel challenges and it really helped to keep him interested in Maths when he had a less than engaging teacher at school.

I'm in Edinburgh, and was in a similar situation (son is now doing maths at university)

Maths circle and Maths challenge. Also loads of resources on YouTube, like matt Parker and numberphile...Great maths outreach stuff. Pre-wired coding club near castle terrace is fab too

Lots of good advice here. In case not already mentioned, try Nrich, Martin Gardner puzzles & Alex Bellos books.

Thank you! Now the challenge is to get him interested- at 15 everything I say is met with a grunt. I'll casually leave him a list with these in it I guess. Maybe we could look together. Ha! Tips welcome!
Thanks 'sonic' have been trying to get him to orewired.it looks good, but so far he's not keen. He's v shy and doesn't feel like he's met his tribe at school. Luckily he still sees mates from junior school who are all great.