Unhappy with Maths at Secondary

[MerryMarigold]

Not sure what I could/ should do about this. Ds1 had just moved to y7 and the Maths he's been doing is woeful, way too easy for him. He's had hardly any homework and what he's had is about y4 level (my other children address in y4). It's particularly sad as he induced duo much last year and did pretty well in his sat.

I asked my friend's kid if hers was similar and she said they get homework 3x per week and it's really hard. I feel terrible that ds is getting left behind. I'm not directing him to be in the same group as Jeffery but the discrepancy seems to be huge whereas in primary he was middling. I'm just worried the gap is going to get worse and worse even in a few short weeks. Also that he is not working to his potential. I'm really not one of those parents, but I feel quite upset about this.

What should I do?

Gah. Should read properly before I post even if it's 2.30am!

Induced = improved

You should also check before you put accidentally put your C's name in a post!!

You might want to report your post, get it removed , and start again.

I don't think this is unusual for Y7. They tend to spend a lot of time in the first few weeks working out what the DC have covered and what level they are working at. Both my DC have been thoroughly bored at the start ofY7 but the work starts ramping up towards and after half term. Getting maths homework 3x a week seems unusual for secondary school - my DC have maths homework once a week, and they did find it hard to start with but that was more to do with the format and the expectations than the content iyswim.

Does the school set? If so, is he in the correct set? (though, again this is something that not all schools sort out straight away)

Are they set in year 7 for maths? Is he in the wrong set?

You could get him a CGP or Letts revision guide and workbook. Maths ability increases by doing maths, so he could do the equivalent of a few homeworks at home so he does not fall behind the set above.

Not unusual. Year 7 normally don't go into sets as they access your child's ability to then set them either after Christmas or in year eight.

They don't know what all the other children have learnt at primary school so they need to ensure everyone is on the same level before they move onto more advanced work.

OP, as others have said, it may just be temporary, but it might not be. Wait and see what happens after half term. If he's feeling challenged in every other subject there's no reason why he shouldn't be feeling challenged in maths too. It is possible that his teacher is not differentiating appropriately, and that may be because she's new to the role - maths teachers are hard to come by at the moment and schools are having to make do with what they can get - she may even be a non-specialist. The school website (if it's compliant with govt guidelines) should list all of the teachers' qualifications, so that should be easy to check.

If things don't improve after half term, next thing to do would be to write a friendly email to the form teacher or head of year saying how happy you are with most of the experience so far, but that you have this concern, and your child feeling unhappy about it. If they don't give you an answer that you're happy with then consider escalating it higher.

My DS had a similar experience in Y7, and when I said something the challenges did increase, along with their understanding of what he and some of his peers were capable of (based on assessments at the end of each half term). He was happier for the rest of the year.

Then we had something similar at the start of Year 8, but this time it was because he had an NQT who was capable/qualified but apparently more interested in teaching science than maths, and who wasn't able to control the class when they became restless (they were a top set and prone to pointing out her mistakes too). Again I and other parents mentioned something to the school, though it became clear they were already on to her from a performance management perspective, and she left the school before Xmas (to go and work at a private school - my heart bleeds for those who are now paying to be taught by her!). In the meantime a much more senior teacher was drafted in to teach my son's class to compensate for the dip in performance at the start of the year, so the end-of-year outcomes were very good.

Now it's started again at the beginning of Year 9, with another NQT - let's hope this one finds her feet more quickly than the last.

If your school is Good/Outstanding it should have processes in place to make sure all students are making appropriate progress in all subjects, and they will want to know if you or your son are unhappy with any aspect of the school.

The school website (if it's compliant with govt guidelines) should list all of the teachers' qualifications,

This isn't the case, schools don't need to do this and in many cases there would be uproar if they did!

Agree with others that you need to find out if your DS is set yet, and if yes, if he is in the correct group. One homework per week is a reasonable expectation, you could ask what the school homework policy is. Some schools ease Y7 in gently so this may ramp up.

If after you've checked about setting it appears the teacher is just setting too easy work, send an email/note saying that your DS is finding it too easy and you'd appreciate their opinion (sometimes kids whinging that things are easy are still getting it wrong and need the practice).

Thanks for the correction noble. Our school is an academy and does publish that info, but maybe just because they just got sick of everyone assuming the teachers weren't qualified when they were.

Even so, if the OP's DC's maths teacher is listed on the website as a PE/geography/art/something else teacher, then they're unlikely to be a maths specialist. They may just have a A Level, or even just a GCSE, in Maths, and be under-confident in teaching it. In these bleak times of austerity and teacher shortages secondary schools will understandably be prioritising their specialists' teaching time for Key Stage 4 rather than Key Stage 3.

Piggy, Jeffery was a typo, not ds1's name! ("I'm not expecting him to be in the same group as friend's dd").

Thanks all. I rang Head of Y7 and she said they are set and he is in set 3 out of 7. I hate to think what set 7 are doing if set 3 are doing Y4 work! I don't actually care which set he is in, just that all the progress he made in Y6 is maintained and that he doesn't slide. I assume they have a SAT score, a report and the KS3 curriculum to know at least roughly what children know, rather than revising functions from Y4 and Y5. I emailed Head of Maths to ask her to look into what they are doing in that group as apparently the teacher is new.

I wouldn't actually mind the ease-in so much if it was school-wide. It is just the comparison with what is probably set 1 or 2 in the same school which had me uneasy. Friend's dd doing hard homework 3x per week (which I think is too much, but anyway). I do not see why those who are already a bit ahead should get massively ahead because of poor teaching in a lower set. There should be some consistency across Y7 in what they are doing and what homework is set.

Ds1 made so much progress in Y6 and was really pleased with himself. I think it's actually damaging to confidence to have a homework that converts centimetres into millimetres after 4 weeks of secondary school. As far as I can see, they have done zero reasoning so far and very basic functions.

JustRichmal, I could do stuff at home, but I really don't see why I should have to when other children in the same school are not being let down in the same way.

I hope my email to Head of Maths was ok! (I didn't express it quite that forcefully although I think it does imply similar content).

Ds hasn't so much whinged about it being easy. It's more my observations on homework (which he's had twice since term started) and the final straw was this weekend converting cms to mms! You should look at the SATs reasoning paper. It is way way way beyond that.

Just because the SATs reasoning paper is hard, it doesn't mean that the pupils are actually able to do it - the examiners report from this year's higher tier GCSE said that even those students were bungling basic metric conversions. I taught a Y7 middle set the other day and about a third of them could not multiply two 2 digit numbers together at all, despite it being on the SATs and taught in primary. Concepts do need revisiting because things get forgotten.

That said, if that's all the homework was, it does sound pretty easy for a middle set. If the HOD is looking into it and the teacher's new, then hopefully they just haven't yet got a handle on the scheme of work and level of the group and things should improve.

If, however, it turns out that the teacher is crap, don't assume that there's an easy solution and an excellent teacher waiting in the wings if they get sacked. There's a critical shortage of maths teachers and it could be a choice of a crap teacher or no teacher. If that's the case, then yes, you probably need to start doing some work at home.

Thanks giraffe. Yes, I agree that just because it's on the paper doesn't mean they can all do it. But if they can score 109, they can do most of it.

Didn't know about Math teacher shortage. Hmmmm...well dh may have to compensate for teacher in that case, but not easy getting ds to do extra work at home.

I also don't really understand how secondary works. Isn't there a Maths lead for the year group? Don't they discuss what work each set is doing, at least roughly? It shouldn't come down to good or bad teaching. I have no idea of that as yet, it's just very bad content.

It must be a very high achieving school if 109 puts you in set 3?

At secondary there will be a KS3 coordinator who will be in charge of Y7-8 or 7-9 depending on when the school starts GCSE maths. There will be a scheme of work, and how prescriptive that is depends on the school. My school has a higher and foundation scheme of work, so sets 1 and 2 follow the higher one, sets 3 and 4 follow foundation (we've got sets 1-4 in two halves of the year). The SOW might say 'converting metric units' and the foundation tier would revise basic conversions from primary while the higher tier would push onto converting units of area and volume. Generally we use our professional judgement as to the level required for each individual class.

Thanks, noble. That is really helpful to understand a bit how things work. I feel much calmer now!

It's 6 forms of 30 so I am guessing they are streamed into 6 groups plus a 'learning support'. Not really sure if it is high achieving, it's not a grammar, just a state school. They may have combined his score with his entry CAT which involved a lot of non verbal work (which he'd never done) and he has slow processing too.

Merry my DS1 has just gone into Yr 7 (DS2 may be exactly the same age as your DT's ) and he has only had 1 lot of Maths homework so far and it was about 40 basic questions which DS2 would have been able to have answered a high proportion of them and yes, there were questions such as converting cm's to mm's etc.

As far as I can tell from how the classes are numbered, he seems to be in Set 1 for Maths (although that may be a coincidence as another parent told me that they don't set until Christmas!). He got 115 in his SAT's test and was classed as a high achiever at primary school so I am astonished that your DS, with a SATs score of 109, would be in Set 3!

I think you have done the right thing in asking the question - if nothing else, it will put your mind at ease that everything is as it should be.

Thero, that's reassuring. What uspet me about the converting was that it was 24 questions of the same thing. 1 column converting cm to mm and one mm to cm. It took him approx 4 minutes. Ds2 could have done it with his eyes shut too. Ds1 has worked so so so hard to get to where he is, and I would be devastated for it to slide. He's not a natural like ds2 but he was gutted to miss' greater depth' on Maths as he was getting it in the practises at school and I could see how good he was feeling about himself. I was very happy with whatever he got as he worked hard. Perhaps he went to a good primary as a high proportion of kids got over 110 so yes, he was just above middle I'd guess.

DD is year 7 top set of a high performing comprehensive, and yes, they are set from day 1.
She has been doing fractions, simple ones and she has completely cocked them up as she was at a prep school and did 11+ in january and has barely picked up a pen since so is very rusty and I expect that's exactly why they're doing such simple stuff.

DS1, year 10, same school, top set is doing maths which I'm sure we never even touched for GCSE and which is beyond any type of comprehension to me so I'm fairly sure it's going to ramp but significantly. Really don't stress about it, they always go over the easy stuff at the start of year 7.

ujerneyson, my concern was not that they are going over easy stuff (I get why) but that other children in the same year but a slightly higher set are not - hence a huge gap is going to appear. Even a term of that could make quite a big difference.

But so long as ultimately they're working towards the same goal i.e a higher level paper and getting them to 7,8,9 level why does it matter? It's really early days and if it's a good school they'll have the same end goal for them.

24 questions of the same thing.
This stood out to me.
When I was at school we often did 24 questions of the same thing. They may have got slightly harder as you went through it. but often not noticeable.
I noticed for dd1 and dd2 they tended not to do this. Quick exercise then move on. But I also noticed that they then didn't retain the subject as well. This meant when they went back to the subject a few weeks later they had to start off by revising what they'd already done.
When they moved on as they got older to doing more 24 questions of the same thing they (and others in the class) retained it much better.
A bit of boredom now may mean they can move quicker later.

True, Witchend. He definitely benefits from repetition, but usually on new things rather than things he's done repeatedly before.