Keeping Up

Abstract

This chapter looks at the difficulties children experienced in doing mathematics at secondary school and examines the avenues of help they sought to improve or defend their subject positions. For some it was asking for extra help from their teachers or classmates. Others could attend special lunchtime clinics run by the school to support those who were experiencing difficulties. One child attended an after-school tutoring programme, and two worked with private tutors. Such interventions were usually prompted by the children’s perception that they had fallen behind others. Help from sources outside the school was shown to produce a significant improvement in the children’s achievement in school tests and examinations. In turn, this changed the children’s views of their mathematical capabilities, although they generally attributed their improved results to concentrated application rather than any change in their fixed mathematical capacities.