28/09/2026
Free Higher Level leaving cert maths class
At present my Facebook face is being bombarded with ads for maths grinds, teachers doing it in the evening, kids in college who are looking to earn a few extra euros and companies dedicated to just giving grinds.
And curiousity got the better of me and I started watching some of the free online video classes just to see what was on offer, and the quality of these videos is quite alarming.
The marketing strategies, especially for a number of the larger companies is absolutely top class but the level of maths teaching is appalling.
I watched one video where the “student” giving the online class was trying to explain fractions and it was just incredible what I was watching. The explanations were so poor I even found it hard to understand what he was trying to say, and I understand fractions. I sat there imagining what a student who didn’t understand fractions must be thinking! And not only was the explanation very poor he made a mistake in the example he was showing, but it was obvious that it wasn’t a mistake that you notice and correct, it was a mistake that showed he didn’t actually know the correct way to do the question and his answer was wrong!
I also joined one of the free online class for junior cert, and there were 32 students in it. Nobody getting to ask questions, the material was not being explained at all, just questions being done out, with no explanation as to why each step was happening and I can just again imagine what students are thinking.
And the one thing that I keep coming back to is that if this is the quality of grinds out there, students must be sitting in these classes thinking “ok it is me..I’m just no good at maths” which is wrong!
Not every student is going to get a H1 or a H2, not every student is going to do higher level, but whatever level you do you should at least be given the opportunity to get the best result you can, and this is definitely not happening.
So I am going to run one free higher level leaving cert class on calculus. Anyone who wants to join is welcome to. The purpose of this class is to show students what they should be getting from their grinds. A genuine opportunity to understand the material and for their questions to be heard and answered in a way that they might finally sit there and think “maybe it’s not me”!
If interested PM for details.
