Does your child need maths tuition?

The report card tells you a mark was lost, not where

Your child comes home with 62 for maths. You now know one thing: 38 marks went somewhere. You do not know whether they went to a topic that was never properly understood, to reading the question too fast, or to arithmetic that falls apart when the clock is running. Those are three different problems. Only one of them is solved by a weekly tuition slot.

Most parents book tuition off the grade, because the grade is the only signal they have. That is a reasonable thing to do with bad information. The better move is to spend a week getting better information first. It costs nothing, and it changes what you ask for.

The distinction that matters most

Nearly every lost mark in PSLE maths falls into one of two buckets. Either your child set the question up wrong, or they set it up right and the arithmetic let them down.

Here is a question that separates them cleanly.

Aiden had $60. He spent two fifths of it on a book, then a third of the remainder on lunch. How much did he spend on lunch?

The answer is $12. Put it in front of a class and two wrong answers come back more often than any others, and they are wrong for opposite reasons.

Drawn, the whole thing becomes obvious.

Here is the same working in words.

1. 1Find one unit. The book took two fifths, so think in fifths. $60 divided by 5 is $12, and that is one unit.
2. 2Take out the book. Two fifths is two units, so the book cost $24. Most children are comfortable to here.
3. 3Count what is actually left. Three units remain, which is $36. This is the line the $20 child never wrote, and missing it is their whole mistake.
4. 4Take a third of the remainder. This is where the $9 child slipped. Notice that if you have stayed in units, there is no division left to get wrong: a third of three units is one unit, and one unit is already $12. Working in units removes the very step the slip happened in.

The $20 child skipped step three. The $9 child got all the way to step four and then fumbled it. Both scored zero, and on a report card they are indistinguishable.

But they need opposite things. One has to be taught to read the question and hold the remainder in view, which is teaching, and it is what a good tutor is for. The other already knows the method and needs reps under time pressure until the division stops slipping, which is practice, and practice is far cheaper than teaching. Buying the wrong one is how families spend a year on tuition and watch the same marks disappear.

Four things worth knowing before you spend

• Which topics. "Weak at maths" is not something a tutor can act on. "Loses marks on fractions of a remainder, and on rate" is.
• Which half breaks. Setup or arithmetic. You find this by watching them work, not by marking the answer at the end.
• Whether it is speed. Some children know the method perfectly and run out of time. That is a different fix again, and more teaching can make it worse by adding content when what was needed was repetition.
• Whether it is recent. A topic that was fine in P4 and is shaky now is a gap. A topic that has never been solid is a foundation issue, and that one usually does want a person in a room.

How to find out in a week

You do not need a formal assessment, and you do not need to be able to do the maths yourself. You need one week and something that files the mistakes for you.

1. 1First, look at it yourself. Ten minutes, no account. Three real exam-standard questions, for you rather than your child. You get the walkthrough Lah, the tutor, talks through out loud, the way the figure lights up step by step as she says it, and the mistake book at the end. The point is to know what your child would be using before you hand it to them. Try it free
2. 2Then register your child, free. The free tier gives them a full exam paper each month that comes back with an AL band, plus ten questions a day, split across a daily round and a topic drill. Every mistake is filed automatically. Start free
3. 3Have them sit the exam like a real one. Treat it as a WA or an end-of-year paper. Timed, no help, one sitting. That gives you a band to hold the report card against, and it is the closest thing to a proper baseline you can get at home in an evening.
4. 4Then read the mistake book. Every wrong answer lands there, sorted by whether it was skipped, a careless slip, or something not learned yet, and grouped by topic. That grouping is the answer to "which topics" and "which half breaks", written down for you.

By the end of the week you will know which topics are costing marks, and whether they are being lost at the setup or in the working. That is a briefing a tutor can act on, or a reason to decide you do not need one yet.

When tuition is the better answer

Sometimes it is, and no amount of practice at home substitutes for it. Go and find a good tutor if any of these is true.

• Your child has stopped trying. Confidence problems are people problems. A tutor your child gets on with can rebuild something no app can touch.
• The gap is more than a year deep. If P5 work is failing because P3 place value never landed, that needs a person diagnosing and reteaching in sequence, patiently and out loud.
• Nobody at home can supervise. Be honest about this one. A parent who is not there at 8pm cannot run the method above, and a tutor who is there is worth more than a better tool that goes unused.
• Your child works better with someone watching. Some children simply do. That is a fact about them, not a failure.

None of that is an argument against tuition. It is an argument for knowing what you are buying before you buy it.

If you are already in tuition

Two things change.

First, you can brief the tutor properly. "He is weak at maths" gets you a general programme. "He loses marks on fractions of a remainder, and it is the setup rather than the arithmetic" gets you a targeted one, and a good tutor will be glad of it.

Second, there are six days between sessions. That is where the repetition lives, and repetition only works when the feedback arrives while your child still remembers what they were thinking. A worksheet marked next Saturday teaches very little. Answered and explained on the spot, with the full working shown, the same question is worth far more.

A tutor and daily repetition are not competing purchases. One teaches the method, the other makes it stick.

What it costs to find out

Nothing. Your own look takes ten minutes and needs no account. Your child's week runs on the free tier: an exam paper a month with a band at the end, ten questions a day, the mistake book, and the worked solution on every question in every mode.

If you decide tuition is the answer, you will brief the tutor better than you would have. If you decide it is practice, you will have found that out in a week rather than a term.