Help! My Child is Behind in Maths. But Are They Really?

One of the most common customer queries I get is from parents concerned that their child is “behind” in maths. The query usually looks something like this:

My child is 8 years old and should be in Year 3. We’ve done the placement test for Milestone Maths and they tested into Level C which is supposed to be for Year 2. Obviously I’m concerned and want to know how to “catch them up.”

My reply to this concern is simple and consistent:

I would like to assure you that “behind” is a very relative term. I find most children transferring from other programs or mainstream school test at least one year lower into Milestone and that’s totally OK.

The most important thing is that children progress at the pace that suits them, not an arbitrary timetable.

If your child tested into Level C, that is the correct place for their current skill level and knowledge. They may spend 6, 9 or 12 months on Level C and all of those would be OK.

You see, maths curricula are not all created equal. In fact, I would be able to take three different programs, all based on the Australian Curriculum for one specific year level and find three entirely different “levels” of difficulty within the pages of those programs.

Not only that, but the sequence in which topics are taught varies enormously from one text to another. This is a natural and well understood phenomenon. In fact, it is the reason that Year 7 in most high schools is largely a revision, with only slight extensions, of the entire primary school maths curriculum to ensure that all students in the school are “on the same page” by the time they get to Year 8.

That is why we have a very detailed and fine grained placement test for Milestone Maths. This allows you to place your child at exactly the right point for them to succeed in the program.

But correct placement is only the first ingredient for success. The second is proper advancement.

The thing that most homeschool parents are inclined to do with any curriculum is to start at page one, do however many pages are recommended (or they guess is appropriate) for the day and then start at the next page tomorrow and repeat. The trouble with this is that it assumes that all children learn at exactly the same pace. But they don’t. In fact, if they are progressing properly, no two children will take the exact same path through the curriculum.

So, how should a child progress through Milestone Maths? Firstly, you should be careful to heed the pacing advice given in the introduction of every primary level Milestone Maths book. You should spend approximately 15-30 minutes on maths per day. No more and preferably no less. If your child consistently takes more or less time you should confirm their placement and then adjust pacing as detailed in the parent introduction for every book.

Once you have found an appropriate pace for your child, you then need to be careful to ensure they are actually mastering the material. This is especially important for foundational skills and concepts. It’s easy to know which skills and concepts are foundational because these are the ones that appear regularly in the Review and Practice sections.

Generally, when a child first encounters a new concept they might not fully “get it” at first. That is normally OK and is also why the Review and Practice sections exist. But if you find that you are still needing to help your child do a particular type of problem after several days of it appearing in the Review and Practice sections, you should stop and take some time to review just that concept. Go back to the original lesson and re-read it with your child. Rewrite the Lesson Practice exercises from that lesson on separate paper and work through them with your child. Check to see if we have a video on the concept and watch that with your child. And, if you’ve done all that and your child is still having problems please send us an email or a text message and we will endeavour to coach you and your child through it! We are passionate about having you and your child succeed in maths!

Since I authored the books, you might think that I “made them to measure” for my own son. But you’d be wrong. I wrote them in the most logical and consistent way that I could while following the overall scope and sequence of The Australian Curriculum.

Just recently I had to pull up the reins on my son and spend a day practising two digit by one digit multiplication because he had completely missed the point of the original lesson. (He completed the lesson independently while I was tutoring.) I will be monitoring his progress on that particular skill for the next few weeks and I will give him random extra reviews to ensure that it does stick. It appears MANY times in Level D (and again in Level E) so I know it’s important 😉

One thing I have noticed in my over 30 years of tutoring, teaching and homeschooling is that children are not robots that learn at a constant rate. One day they’ll be “flying through” material and the next they seem to take for ever to grasp what looks like a simple concept. This is normal and should not be a cause for alarm.

The point is: maths is not a race. In fact, education in general should not be a race. The system has trained most of us to believe that there are certain milestones a child should reach by any given age but that doesn’t actually reflect the reality. Everyone develops at their own pace and that is totally OK!

You have your child’s entire childhood to equip them for life long learning. Note I said, for “life long learning”. You don’t even need to teach them everything they will need to know in adulthood. You couldn’t possibly do so. When it comes to maths, you should ensure the basics are rock-solid and that what they do know, they know thoroughly and can apply flexibly. The rest will follow.

The one thing you will want to make sure of is that you follow a curriculum that covers the fundamentals fully and systematically. Then pace it to your child rather than pacing your child to the curriculum.

If you do that, success is just a matter of time.