Guide for parents · September 2026
Maths is diagnosed from the working, not the answer
Online maths lessons lose the one thing maths diagnosis depends on — the working on paper. What that costs, and what to use instead between sessions.
Maths transfers to video better than most subjects, and worse in one way
A shared whiteboard is close to a real one. Symbols, diagrams and steps appear as the tutor writes them, and for demonstrating a method that is not far off sitting beside somebody. Of all the subjects sold online, maths is among the ones that survive the format best.
There is one exception, and it is not a small one. Maths is diagnosed from working, not from answers. The information a teacher needs is in what the child crossed out, the order they wrote things in, where the pen stopped. Over a video call, unless somebody deliberately holds a page up to the camera, that evidence never arrives, and the tutor is left reasoning from a final number.
The three things sold as online maths help
| What it is | What it is good at | What it cannot do |
|---|---|---|
| Live one-to-one video with a tutor | Explaining a new idea, answering back | See the paper; happen more than weekly |
| Group online classes | Pace, structure, cost | Notice one child's specific hole |
| Photo-a-question answer apps | Producing an answer in seconds | Leave any learning behind |
The third row deserves a plain warning, because it is what most children reach for by themselves. A tool that returns a finished solution to a photographed question removes exactly the moment where learning was about to happen. The homework gets handed in. Nothing else changes, and the parent finds out in the next assessment.
What the gap between sessions does to maths specifically
Maths is cumulative in a way that punishes weekly-only support. A child who understood unlike denominators on Tuesday and does not touch them again until the following Tuesday has had six days in which the class moved on to something built on top.
That is the practical case for something happening on the other days. Not more explaining — repetition, spaced out, short enough to actually occur.
How Pobbi fills those days
The maths learning check is twenty questions drawn from a bank of eighteen skills, aimed at Year 5 to Year 9. About twelve minutes, free, no card required. It is not a lesson and it does not explain; it finds where the chain broke.
It does that by going backwards on a mistake. The skills are mapped to the ones beneath them, so missing the sum of a third and a quarter triggers checks on lowest common multiples, on equivalent fractions, and on adding fractions with the same denominator. Missing a two-step equation triggers checks on simplifying expressions and substituting a value. The result is eighteen skills sorted into secure at eighty per cent or above, still being practised between fifty and seventy-nine, and still being learned below that.
Practice afterwards responds to a wrong answer with a hint, a smaller question or a worked comparison rather than the solution — which is the precise opposite of what a photograph-the-question app does, and the reason the two are not substitutes.
Typing rather than writing is a real limitation here and worth naming: a typed answer carries less information than a page of working, so the check infers the gap from which skills fail rather than from how a child laid the problem out.
When live online maths is the right purchase
When the obstacle is a genuinely new idea rather than a shaky old one. The first encounter with negative numbers behaving unexpectedly, or with a letter standing for an unknown, benefits enormously from somebody who can rephrase until it lands.
When you live where good maths tutors are scarce. Online deletes the travel radius, and for a family in a rural area that is the difference between a limited choice and a national one.
And when a GCSE is close and the gap is technique — method marks, command words, laying out working so a slip does not cost everything. Pobbi holds no specification and cannot help there.
Questions about maths help online
My child uses an app that solves photographed questions. Is that bad?
For checking a finished answer, it is fine. For getting through the homework, it removes the work. The test is whether they can do the next one without it.
Would a group online maths class be enough?
If your child is broadly keeping up and needs structure, often yes and much cheaper. If there is a specific hole, the group cannot stop for it.
How do I make an online maths tutor useful?
Give them the list of what is insecure before session one, and ask your child to show their written working to the camera rather than only typing answers.
Is Pobbi an online maths tutor?
No. There is nobody on the other end. It is software that finds the missing prerequisite and gives guided practice on it, and it does not replace live explanation, exam coaching or specialist support.