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Finding a Secondary Maths Tutor
Sharon Keevins • November 22, 2020
Finding a Secondary Maths Tutor
Has maths changed significantly or did we just fail to listen properly at school? Whatever it is, if your child brings you their maths homework, the chances are that you will just look at it blankly for a few moments and then tell them to go ask their other parent, because you don’t know the answer. Maths at secondary level starts to get serious, and don’t worry if you can’t help your child with it; there are many who cannot.
Secondary maths tuition isn’t something that you can just pick up and go with. Maths, together with physics, chemistry, biology, and general science is a subject that you actually have to know to be able to get by in. Unlike other subjects, they are difficult to guess the answer correctly and you actually have to be in receipt of the knowledge to be able to help your child out. As many of us left school some time ago, and haven’t really practiced since then, we usually aren’t in a position to work the answers out, and definitely not to help our children with it.
But your child education is their pathway to a good career and really getting on in the world, and you want them to do the best they can, so what are the alternatives? You can leave it to fate and take a pragmatic view that your child will do the best that they can, and that will shape their lives, but that relies on how well your child can do in both coursework and during exams. You can try helping yourself, but you actually run the danger of damaging your child’s education if you fundamentally misunderstand what they are trying to do, or don’t really know the subject. Perhaps a better option is to look at using an online tutor who does know their subject and has a proven track record of helping secondary school students get through their coursework successfully.
Secondary-level maths tutors are highly adept at their subject and can teach to any level, which means that they will not only be able to help with your child’s current level of education, but can improve it too! Private tuition may sound extravagant, but it is a system that an increasing number of parents are turning to so that they can ensure their child does well in subjects that they may be struggling with, and excel in those that they are good at.
An education is all about taking a subject and making the student comfortable and adept at it, and that is what a private tutor can do. So, the concept is obvious, but how do you locate a suitable tutor who can help with your child’s education?
Many parents carry out internet searches using terms such as “GCSE Tuition Centre Near Me”, “Secondary Maths Tuition”, or even “Online GCSE Maths Tutor” and sift through the results of those. These are all very good terms since they will highlight tutor groups who are both available online but run classes that are close to where you live.
Getting your child extra tuition is a great way to not only help them enjoy their education, but also to improve grades and set them on the right course for the rest of their lives.
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There is an argument that a child’s education is best left to their school teachers, but there is also a counter argument that education is an institution where one size doesn’t fit all and children will learn at different rates. In these cases, the level and/or style of education that your primary teacher is delivering may not be appropriate for your child, and they may not respond to it well. Even at primary level, students are starting to develop their own individual educational style and learning speed, and that might not be fully realised in a mainstream environment. From an early age, children start to find that the simple presentation of information may not be the best way for them to learn, but a mainstream teacher may not have the time available to uncover that, let alone adjust their teaching style to accommodate it. That could leave your child at a disadvantage, and affect their learning deeply. So, what can you do about that? Many parents find that the more bespoke and flexible approach of private tuition can provide the answers. Private tutors are able to take their time to really understand their students and find out the best way to educate them. This is a far cry from what they are likely to find in the standard classroom, and can make a child grow in confidence as they find that their own learning style is being embraced. Primary school English tuition follows set rules and standards. A teacher will have a certain curriculum to follow and all of their lessons will be set out for them in a scheme of work (SoW). This is the document that will be followed throughout the year and it is pretty rigid. There is little scope for lessons to move outside of the scope of work and if a child doesn’t fully understand a concept, or needs extra coaching, the teacher may not have time set aside to be able to offer that extra tuition. A private tutor will, however, take the time to get to know your child and understand which areas of curriculum they need further assistance with, and then be in a position to deliver it. But because the private tutor is not tied to a scheme of work, they can focus on the areas that your child needs help with specifically, and make them a more confident learner from an early age. We'd love to show you what we can offer and we're also here for no-obligation support, as well as free assessments for all children.
Maths is an essential subject, but it is also one of the most misunderstood and, dare we say it, disliked learning streams. But it is a subject that makes it difficult to progress in life if you don’t have a good understanding of it. We use maths every day and mostly when we are unaware that we are doing so. It is essential that you give your child a strong background in maths, and sometimes, that may mean accessing some extra tuition. Not all maths tutors are the same. There, we’ve said it! Maths is one of those subjects that you cannot really approach in a mediocre or half-hearted way. It is a highly complex technical subject that if you fail to get it, or miss parts out, you may as well not have started in the first place, since it becomes increasingly difficult to catch up. Mathematics has a huge number of interrelated subjects that feed into each other. It is based on a series of laws and absolutes – such as the number line – that have to be fully understood before you can really move on to the next part. It is a subject that is based on pure logic; there are no trick questions and answers can always be worked out using the data that you have been given, and if you haven’t been given it, you can probably find it using the maths tools available to you. But for all of its logic – and perhaps even because of it – people tend to dislike maths, and that can be a problem to learning. Take 100 primary school children and tell them that you are going to do a maths lesson and you may get a very high percentage who smile and embrace it. Maths at a primary level tends to be a lot more sublime and based on everyday factors such as counting fruit or the number of legs on a herd of cows. It’s fun to do and usually accompanied by colourful pictures. Now carry out the same exercise in a secondary school and see how many of the 100 students look unhappy or pensive. A much higher proportion will not want to do a maths lesson because in the transition from primary to secondary education, it has transmogrified into a tough subject that repels many. The main difference is that students in secondary education are now trying to work out the area under a curve, rather than counting cows’ legs, and while it is still fundamentally counting, it is a lot more abstract in nature. And it gets worse with the introduction of other concepts such as sins, cosines, and tangents and other trigonometric functions. The tools required to carry out the work – and sometimes analysis of the answers – become increasingly abstract and begin to lose a connection with the real world. And when students become bored with a subject, they lose the will to learn it properly, and that can be exacerbated if the tutor is hard-pushed to complete the curriculum and move on. Work becomes rushed and when that is added to even the smallest misunderstanding, it starts the student on a course of increasingly poor conception. The next stop is maths anxiety and then actual dislike of the subject. How, as a parent, can you stop this happening? Certainly, you want your child to embrace a subject like maths, but to do that they have to like it, and to like it they have to be taught it properly. Many parents are finding that the only real way of doing this is seek extra tuition, where expert teachers can really enthuse with the student and show them how much fun it can be to learn maths. If you have any questions or concerns, or to find out more about the maths tuition services that we can offer, just click below. Maths needn’t be hard work; we only make it so because we learn it in the wrong way. A fully qualified and enthusiastic maths tutor can turn all of that around and make it a subject that they can enjoy once more, and that will have a huge impact on their post-school life.