Stop feeding the maths monster by making kids think it’s too difficult

The common perception that “maths is hard” can become a self-fulfilling prophecy. When students approach maths expecting to struggle, they give up more quickly. This negative mindset creates a cycle of low confidence, less motivation and poor performance.

Parents who say “I was never a maths person” help to normalise the myth that maths is not for everyone, and it undermines the ability of so many students as they progress through school and into adulthood. Most people will be able to identify the time they realised maths was “not for them”.

Unlike other subjects, there’s a social acceptability around admitting mathematical weakness that inadvertently allows children to fail. This dangerous belief can permeate our schools, preventing learning from happening before it even has a chance.

To make matters worse, if teachers themselves face barriers to their learning in mathematics, they can’t instill in children the confidence they need to demonstrate ability in this area. Teachers must be maths literate and confident in what they’re teaching for children to be more likely to learn.

When teachers lack deep conceptual understanding, they often resort to procedural teaching that focuses on memorisation over understanding and perpetuates the cycle of poor mathematical education.

Bala Wande is the maths programme of Funda Wande, a non-profit organisation focused on improving foundational learning in South African schools. Bala Wande aims to break the cycle of poor maths achievement, offering support for both teachers and learners and aiming to build confidence across the board.

Without a clear understanding of numbers and basic arithmetic operations covered in primary grades, students struggle with higher concepts like algebra or trigonometry in later grades. Mathematics is a hierarchical subject that builds on itself, concept by concept. The concepts develop along trajectories, or paths, that must be followed for a clear understanding at every step along the way.

If a child isn’t clear on whole numbers, integers become difficult; without mastering integers, rational numbers pose problems. This ultimately means that operating in the real number system can become a mystery they can’t solve.

Breaking a cycle

In maths, a weak academic year means missing fundamental building blocks, making each subsequent unit progressively harder. It will be the year they never forget – the year they “gave up” on maths or realised it was “not for them”. If such a year could be eliminated, the scenario would be turned around.

The debilitating feelings of fear and failure around mathematics sometimes stem from an “unchangeable mindset”: students believe their mathematical ability can’t change, whereas those who have a “mathematical mind” will be able to achieve.

This anxiety can be seen as excess mental pressure, a lack of confidence and even a “brain freeze” – when ­students forget concepts they previously understood.

To address this serious issue of a breakdown of confidence and the build-up of anxiety, the Bala Wande team has developed high-quality materials for the foundation phase. The aim is to prevent the problem before it starts.

One shortcut students follow is memorising formulas and thinking they just need to put values in to get answers, but mathematics is fundamentally an analytical subject requiring decisions about what to solve and then how to solve it. Students following the “plug and play” strategy often end up with low confidence, or simply give up on the subject entirely when they realise that the formulas don’t always work.

The Bala Wande programme is designed to support deep conceptual learning, providing teachers with methodologies that will help children to understand concepts and not rely on rote learning and recipes.

Unlike science, which has many practical examples that students can relate to, or languages that students speak, hear and see daily, mathematics sometimes lacks available practical examples. For concepts like number systems or calculus, finding real-world examples can be difficult, forcing students to retain concepts without meaningful connection to their lived experience.

Maths solutions are either right or wrong – there is no middle path or opinion-based answer. This becomes demotivating for students who try to avoid maths questions for fear of wrong answers. Unlike in languages, for example, where in essay subjects partial credit and interpretive arguments exist, mathematics can feel unforgiving and judgemental.

Although the majority of schoolgoing children could do the maths set out by the curriculum, the reality is that some students struggle with learning difficulties that make it challenging to understand formulas, mathematical shapes, figures and number concepts.

When this is the case, these students require special attention and a curriculum paced according to their learning speed. However, these problems often go undiagnosed and unsupported in mainstream classrooms.

Good foundations help

Emily Cairns, who worked with the Canadian charitable organisation Jump Math, illustrates in an article that preschool-aged children develop abilities in early childhood that can be defined as basic maths skills: understanding symmetry from building blocks, dividing snacks equally between friends, and even distinguishing between different quantities from as young as six months old.

Studies have found that children are more open to learning at ages five or six, and by successfully teaching the fundamentals of maths at this stage, they find it easier to develop further maths skills later in life.

Strong foundations create a solid base for each concept to build logically on previous knowledge. When students master basic arithmetic operations, they approach fractions with confidence. When fractions are secure, algebra becomes accessible. This scaffolding only works when early foundations are robust and deeply understood.

Cairns argues that the most effective teaching involves teaching individual concepts in detail so that children understand them instead of just learning them by rote. When foundations are taught conceptually, students develop mathematical reasoning rather than procedural mimicry.

Aiming to address all these concerns, the Bala Wande programme provides a full support package consisting of teacher guides, learner activity books, posters, number cards and other concrete objects to support the learning of early maths concepts in a way that they will be understood and can be built on progressively over the years that follow. All the materials are bilingual to support children learning maths in their mother tongue and English.

The programme has been trialled in two randomised control trials, and other studies are under way to further investigate how to use the materials optimally. Since nothing is ever perfect, revising and improving the quality of the materials form part of the programme designers’ continuing quest.

With the right encouragement and method of teaching, children can build on their natural curiosity for learning and develop maths skills. This will give them greater potential for better outcomes later in life.

We need to optimise teaching and learning in our maths classrooms so that it prepares young children to learn maths in a way that makes them confident enough to never give up on it. Giving up on maths should not be an option because it closes too many doors.

The “monster” can only be challenged through confident teachers, strong foundational teaching and undoing harmful societal narratives about mathematical ability. We need to foster a growth mindset around mathematics. DM

Dr Mark Potterton is a high school principal and Dr Ingrid Sapire is a research associate at the University of the Witwatersrand and the head of mathematics for the Bala Wande programme.