To think we have wasted our money on this tutor,

[Britishsunnygardens]

DC has been with an online maths tutor for 2 years and only achieving 2 in GCSE mocks. I asked the tutor what is the likelihood of DC achieving at 4 and he said there is hope but he will likely get a 2 or 3.

He is probably not practicing as much as he should; but he is doing ok on the other subjects so something isn’t working for DC with maths; maybe the fact is s online or the methodology the teacher is using doesn’t work for DC. I blamed myself for not being more on top of it; but maybe the tutor should have mentioned this before.

I just feel we have wasted thousands of pounds there.

But you felt the need for a tutor before he changed school. So whatever issues he has with maths are not just down to this past year.

Well, with most tutors the offer is that you pay them and they’ll spend an hour (or however much time you have bought) plus preparation time to teach your child.

however like reading, maths is best learnt little and often. If your small child is having trouble with reading then usually the best advice is more practice rather than tutoring.

tutoring can be very effective if it’s focused strongly on those specific areas your child needs to improve on and if it goes alongside your child doing homework either from the tutor or from school.

if you want your child to improve:

then after their year 10 mocks they will be given a list of topics from their exam paper. This will usually be coded red amber or green.
Green on a topic means he could answer the questions. So don’t bother practising those topics any more.

amber means he got some marks on that question but not all of them. These are topics he or you need to tell the tutor to focus on - he’s got some understanding and with help can get more marks.

red topics he got completely wrong.

as the maths exam generally goes from easy questions at the beginning to hard ones at the end either he or you should let the tutor know the red questions towards the beginning because those are the easier topics.

the tutoring can then focus on the topics that will help him pick up as many marks as possible.

there are also a lot of practice sets of questions and revision guides out there - if your son is currently getting a grade 2 he might find some of these useful:

https://stpaulsmaths.com/gcse/revision/

https://corbettmaths.com/5-a-day/gcse/
(the numeracy ones are aimed at grades 1/2/3 and the answers are also on the website).

Has your ds always struggled in maths at school, and if so, could he have dyacalculia?

You say that the maths teaching in school isn't great, but what makes you think that the school is the problem? What are they doing in maths that makes it so bad? If it was a persistent issue with the teaching then I would have brought it up at a parents evening.

I agree that getting a tutor isn't some sort of magic wand.
Your ds has to put the work in too. He can have the most fantastic tutor but to retain what he has learnt, he needs to do some regular retrieval practice to countwrthe forgetting curve. It doesn't have to be for very long even if it is only 10 minutes a day.

If a child is getting a 2 in a mock in Y10 despite tutoring then there's usually one of two problems:

1. the kid has some sort of learning difficulty

2. The kid isn't paying attention or doing the work in school.

Grade 2 not much above primary school level maths. What did he get in his SATs?

My Ds had the same as @Octavia64 has said, a matrix from their maths paper marking each question with a colour. If they were amber or red there was a link to the specific topic and a link to some questions on it to make sure that once they had learned it, they could apply it. I think it was Corbett maths. It was tailored to each child and quite frankly brilliant.

I also know another child a couple of years ahead of my son. She wasn't doing great in maths so went right back to the beginning. All the maths since year 7 was on the school app and she worked her way through it all.

With maths daily practise massively helps. Understanding exactly where they need to focus is the game changer. There is no point doing the maths they already know.

The thing to point out to your son is if he fails to get a grade 4 he will be made to resit it. Does he want maths to end in a year's time or keep going? He also has the summer, doing work, whether it is maths or any other subject he wants to improve his year 10 mock grades on is worthwhile.

If your son is doing well in other subjects but doing this badly in maths, despite having a tutor, he obviously struggles enormously with the subject. It isn't the case of an average mathematician who hasn't put in the work or had some bad teaching over the years. Surely this has come up before. Children can cover it up by using AI for homework and copying others in class but there must have been some previous assessments. Practicing foundation maths papers endlessly might help, but not necessarily. It doesn't sound like he has missed a lot of school so it isn't just a case of catching up.

So from your list of issues, I would say that the MAIN issues you face are that your child is not doing the work outside of the Tutor session and that you haven’t been involved in monitoring this. I understand you’ve been busy and so I’m not blaming you for that. I’m just saying those two issues are far greater the problem than the Tutor most likely.

You’ve got to look at what Tutor has got in terms of the ability to help your child

I may have missed something, but I’m presuming your child cease this Tutor once a week for a couple of hours. Now imagine if your child had one or two extra classes of maths a week one on one at school with a teacher. Would you expect from that alone that their grades would increase significantly?

The learning with maths takes place enormously through doing the work that the Tutor or teacher has explained. If what happens is the child sits with a Tutor the Tutor explain stuff and then the child proceeds to park it until the next session very little will happen in terms of improvement. Paying for a Tutor doesn’t guarantee anything If the child isn’t doing a lot more work off the back of that

Did you post a very similar thread last week? If not, you might want to read that thread because that poster got good advice on there.

There are various issues but I think the main one is that online tutoring is not being effective for DC. I think the tutor should have mentioned this and of course I should have been more on top of it.

I have got this report from school now

I agree with others on this thread @Britishsunnygardens

• Maths will only improve with regular practice
• Speak to the tutor and ask what areas DC is struggling with
• What do they advise? you are paying them so it's OK to ask
• Also ask the school
• Make sure DC does do the work, HW or whatever is set

I also tutor and I have had students who did very little outside tutoring sessions. They did not tend to do very well – it’s not a magic bullet of any kind.

Some DC prefer online sessions, some prefer face to face, IME it really varies.

This thread feels like another I have read also – the reference to maths being bad at the DC's school for example. What does that mean? Does the school have a very low % gaining a 4+? Is this a second thread by you @Britishsunnygardens ?

honestly, i don't think you can expect a tutor to do miracle, if your child is attending school then this is where most of his skills, knowledge and exam practice will come from

Hi, I’m a tutor. Yes, you may have a poor tutor but equally, you may just have a child who can’t/won’t do maths.

Thank you all. The sad thing is that DH is an Engineer and DC1 got an Astar in maths, and there should be helping DC2 more; I know every child is different and DC2 has other strengths but I know they are capable of doing maths.

I will have a conversation with everyone and we will sit down to do 10/15 min of maths with DC2 after dinner. Also change to a face to face tutor.

Thank you

Agree. Tutor can’t do miracles but he should have been more upfront with me, reporting on DC progress, etc,

I agree with this.

How have you wasted thousands?
Have you literally spent thousands without checking his progress till now. And nobody at school or this tutor has flagged up a problem?

Why didn’t DH ask the tutor for updates if you have been too slammed?

Well stop the online. He doesn’t sound like a child that would respond well online. Sort a face to face tutor.

Because DH is always slammed at work.

Anyway, I got a different job now and have more time so will be more on top of it. We got a year to sort it, starting now by changing to a physical tutor and doing daily practice with DC.

OP are you the same poster who put up a very similar thread last week? I notice a couple of PPs have asked you this but you haven’t replied. On that thread there were various questions about dyscalculia and/or trying Functional Skills instead of GCSE.

My DS2 got a 9 in GCSE maths and has just taken A level maths and further maths. DS1, in contrast, simply cannot do maths. He got a 2 at GCSE and then failed Functional Skills maths as well. However we then found a tutor who specialised in SEN teaching. She took him right back to basics and he did eventually pass FS maths. I’m not suggesting that your son has SEN but it does sound like he may need a different type of maths teaching to help him make the necessary progress.

Disclaimer - I am not a teacher and maths was the bane of my life, but I am a mum to two boys with completely different maths abilities and completely different needs for maths teaching.

Good idea to go face to face. Body language of
”aha, I get it” much easier to see in
perosn!

I can't believe you have let this go on for 2 years without noticing the results.
If I was paying a tutor ( my children do have tutors aswell) I would be looking at the kind of work they are doing with the tutor and if they are understanding the method the tutor is using to explain. I would be asking my child regular feedback about how they are getting on.
Also I would definitely make sure to check their term school report to see what grade my child is currently working at, also see if this has improved from last terms.
If it hasn't I would definitely want to know why not.
Is my child not practising enough or not understanding the maths he's being taught in the lesson.
I would see consider if a face to face maths class would be more beneficial.
Unfortunately, it appears you have wasted your money on this occasion.

It is not DC1’s responsibility to be helping DC2 with maths!