Are Nat 5 Maths and Applications of Maths very different from each other?

[thepastawinediet]

DS is really struggling with maths and the teacher has mentioned choosing the 'apps' Nat 5 instead of just maths.

In all honesty his maths education has been so disrupted with Covid and teacher shortages. We have decided to get a tutor starting in August regardless.

He is very into history and English, so I don't see him needing it for uni, but he seems to have got it into his head he'll 'definitely' get an A in apps because it's easier- but how can an equivalent Nat 5 be so much easier?

Apps is more everyday arithmetic, fractions, % etc than the full Nat 5. DS did Nat5 apps and actually uses a lot of it in his job now

You need a reasonable amount of reading comprehension in Apps to work out what the questions are asking. So the maths is easier and more practical but the course itself is not necessarily easier for everyone.

There's an Education Scotland video on it on YouTube. It was very helpful.

This is about the Higher but explains the differences

My DS1 left school with just NAT 4 Maths ( undiagnosed ADHD didn't help).
After a couple of years out I prodded him into doing Nat5 Applications of Maths by distance learning so that he would have Nat5 English and Maths. I basically bought study guides and tutored him. There were a lot of slightly older people doing the qualification to fulfill the Maths qualification requirement for uni courses.
He got an A, which really boosted his confidence.
Fast forward a few years + medication and he completed Access courses and is now near the end of his second year of a Computing degree.
I don't think he uses the knowledge much but I found it a useful refresher on all sorts of sensible stuff.

My youngest is doing Apps of Maths. You can do higher in it now too. If your child isn’t maths-y and doesn’t want to be doing a science based subject at Uni apps is fine. My youngest would struggle with N5 maths but he’s doing well in Apps. It gives him some confidence he wouldn’t have if he was struggling in maths. Back in my day I did maths and arithmetic as 2 o grades so apps is not massively different to that when kids who struggled with maths just did arithmetic. I think it’s good. I was good at maths at school but I knew people who just couldn’t get it, arithmetic then was a good option and apps is now

ultimately it’s all about your child and what they are good at, some subjects are harder than others and the qualification will be seen as better - but it’s still a qualification and an achievement:)

Yes. It's like back in the olden days of O Grade where we did O Grade Maths and a separate Arithmetic. Apps is much much more practical, with things like fractions, percentages, looking at graphs and interpreting data. It's just as demanding but in a different way. There is none of the vectors and trigonometry that there is in Maths. In the Higher Apps course there is more statistics, software use, data handling, finance and things like credit cards and loans, gantt charts, costing for projects etc.

DS was considering doing Apps Higher, he is not doing it for Nat 5. In terms of uni or applying for college courses, most courses consider Apps at Higher just the same as Maths, but many will accept one or the other, not both. Obviously requirements are different for very maths-y courses like Engineering, Physics.

As someone who hasn’t studied maths for a couple of decades, I recently had a look at Nat 5 maths and apps papers. I could do all the Apps paper from my basic knowledge but had forgotten a lot of the stuff necessary for maths. I would definitely say the mathematical aspect of apps is easier- which is probably why any uni course with a maths element asks for maths not apps. However, my dd struggles with wordy questions but has a knack for maths so actually finds maths easier than apps.

The description given to me was that the application of math was more practically based and didn't go into the more abstract mathematical ideas.