A brighter future for our children with Maths

JOHANNESBURG – Sizakele has recently graduated with a BSc degree from Wits University, but did not have sufficient funds to pursue her dream of achieving a Masters degree yet.

She is passionate about mathematics and helping children in her Kempton Park community who love maths too. Joseph from Braamfontein is currently a third year electrical engineering student at Wits, but was struggling to fund his remaining year and was at risk of dropping out. He believes everyone can excel at maths if you work hard enough. And Patience is running a small maths support programme for high school youth in Vosloorus, but wants to reach more children so that they can achieve a better future with a solid maths foundation.

These three passionate mathematicians have just joined a new programme called Brighter Futures Tuition to offer affordable extra maths tutoring using advanced interactive technology on mobile phones that allows the learners in their small tutor groups to learn at their own pace, while still getting the advantage of individualised attention from a tutor.

Brighter Futures Tuition will provide middle income families in their communities a high quality, but affordable (R50/hour) extra maths service for their high school children, while at the same time enabling the tutors to generate a decent monthly income.

“Too many of our children are dropping to Maths Literacy as soon as they can, often encouraged by their schools. This has disastrous results for their career prospects… and too few parents understand that without mathematics their child will not be accepted for most university degrees,” says Patience. She wants to change this by ensuring that each of her learners has the maths foundation before moving on to a new section.

“I’m excited about the technology we use at Brighter Futures, because it is ‘intelligent’. Meaning that if a child gets a question wrong, the system kicks them back to their level of understanding, and then builds them up as they get questions right. This helps to motivate and develop their confidence, something that is so important in maths learning.”

Since 2009, there has been a decline of 17 per cent of learners choosing core maths, whereas 58 per cent of our kids are choosing maths literacy. According to educationists Gail Campbell (Zenex) and Dr Martin Prew (Wits), the problem often starts in primary school, where many learners fail to build the foundation maths skills. They move on to high school, with large chunks of missing maths knowledge and then start failing, resulting in many of their teachers encouraging them to shift to maths literacy. Our poor maths has dire consequences for South Africa as a developing nation resulting in shortages of skills in mining, energy, engineering, construction, IT and more. The recent much-contested World Economic Forum report places South Africa’s maths quality last out of 148 countries, behind countries like Zimbabwe, Lesotho and Nigeria.

“I was one of the lucky few to be selected for a Saturday school in grade 11,” says Sizakele. “It was there that I realised how much I had missed in my primary school maths, and suddenly maths became easy again.”

She wants to give other learners the same “light-bulb” moments in maths that she had.

“I hope to be a role model to other teenagers in my community, helping them achieve brighter futures with maths, because without maths, I don’t think the career options are as bright.”

Brighter Futures Tuition provides affordable high quality extra maths support for grade 8 to 12 learners. The maths tutor sessions use curriculum aligned technology and highly trained tutors so each learner has an individualised learning experience in a small group setting.

Contact Brighter Futures Tuition: 0861-TUITION, via email joanneb@foundation.co.za or visit www.brighterfuturestuiton.org