Maths Support Built Around Your Child

Maths is the subject where old gaps come back

Maths punishes gaps more than any other subject, because almost every topic is built on an earlier one. Ratio rests on fractions. Fractions rest on division and on place value. Algebra rests on knowing what the operations mean rather than how to perform them. A child can carry a small hole for two years without anyone noticing, then appear to "suddenly struggle" the term a new topic stands on top of it.

That is why the most useful question a parent can ask is not "what is my child doing in maths this term?" but "what does this week's work assume they already know?" Everything on these pages is organised around that question.

The chain of skills, and where it usually breaks

The final row is the one parents most often misread. A child who can do twenty calculations correctly but stalls on a worded question does not need more calculation practice. They need help turning a sentence into a calculation.

What the pages below cover

• Year 7 maths — the first year of secondary, and fractions
• Year 6 to Year 7 maths — the transition itself
• Adaptive practice — how the next question gets chosen
• Alternatives to a private maths tutor
• Key Stage 3 tutor alternatives
• Tracking maths progress

How Pobbi works on a maths gap

A learning check puts short questions across a span of prerequisite skills, not just this term's topic, so that a wrong answer in the middle points to where the chain broke. Practice then starts at that point. When the child is wrong, the response is a hint, a smaller sub-question or a worked comparison — not the answer, because the answer ends the thinking.

The parent view reports the same thing in plain terms: what the child got stuck on, whether the same mistake is repeating, and what is worth ten minutes tomorrow. It is not a mark, because a mark tells you the outcome and not the cause.

What this is not

Pobbi is not a live maths tutor, does not sit an exam board's specification, and does not promise to cover the national curriculum in full. Where a child needs live explanation, GCSE preparation or specialist support for a diagnosed need, that is a teacher's job. The honest role for a tool like this is the everyday one: finding the gap, keeping practice short and regular, and giving you something concrete to say when you next speak to the school.

FAQ: Questions parents ask about maths

My child was fine in primary. Why has maths fallen apart in Year 8?

Often nothing fell apart. Primary maths rewards accurate procedures, and secondary maths increasingly rewards knowing why a procedure works. A child who learned the steps without the meaning can stay comfortable for years and then meet a topic where the meaning is unavoidable.

Are times tables still worth the effort?

They matter less as arithmetic and more as working memory. A child who has to compute 7 times 8 in the middle of a fractions question has less attention left for the fractions. That is usually what "careless mistakes" turn out to be.

How long should maths practice take at home?

Short and frequent beats long and occasional, because spacing is what moves a fact or a method into recall. Ten to fifteen minutes on most days does more than an hour on Sunday, and it ends before anyone loses their temper.

Should we use a tutor alongside this?

If you can, and if you already know the gap. The pages on tutor alternatives are not arguments against tutors — they are arguments against paying for a tutor to discover something a free check could have told you in twenty minutes.