Supporting Parents to Support Their Children with Maths

At GRoW, we love seeing our participants take steps to build confidence, explore new opportunities, and pursue their aspirations. Dhanya is a great example of this. Since joining GRoW, she has been actively engaging with our resources and is our GRoW App Ambassador in Croydon. Dhanya recently attended the first session of “How to Help Your Children with Maths,” a short course delivered by Capital City College that supports parents to better understand and assist their children with maths at school.

Dhanya said “I joined the GRoW programme just last month, and it’s been a really helpful experience so far. When I heard about the maths course, I was curious to see how they approach teaching because I’m actually planning to step into teaching myself. I wanted to understand how the course was delivered and how the tutors engage with parents, so I joined to observe and learn from their methods.

It’s a short course – just four sessions over two weeks. I’m interested in learning the techniques and the structure of how they course teaches maths, as these are things I could apply in the future if I pursue teaching.

The first session I attended was mainly about budgeting and money management, which I found interesting and practical. These are the kinds of real-life skills I think would be great to introduce to children as part of maths learning – showing them how numbers and money are part of everyday life. It’s not just about doing sums on paper; it’s about understanding how maths applies to real situations. The trainer was engaging and I’m looking forward to the next session this week.

I have one child who is currently in Year 9 at secondary school. For me, this course isn’t just about supporting him with his homework – it’s also about developing skills that will help me work with other children in the future. I’m really interested in finding a role in a school, perhaps as a teaching assistant as a first step, since I don’t yet have a teaching degree. I’ve been exploring different options and I think this is a good pathway for me.

I’ve also been keeping busy outside of GRoW. The team has helped me search for jobs and voluntary opportunities, and I’ve been active as a Community Responder for Croydon. In this role, I help with small tasks like shopping and welfare calls for people who need support. It’s something I enjoy because I get to meet people and contribute to the community.

I’ll be continuing with the maths course, and I’m looking forward to learning more about how I can use these approaches both at home and, hopefully, in a school setting one day.

We’ll be catching up with Dhanya again once she completes the full course, to hear how the rest of the sessions went and how they have supported her next steps towards working in education.