The Grime music star Cleopatra Humphrey, who goes by the (far less interesting) stage name Mz Bratt, talked up the benefits of a good maths education in a recent interview. [Barking and Dagenham Recorder]
“Education is so important, because you should take nothing in this business for granted.
“I’m finding more and more that maths and numeracy are vital when signing record deals and working out what percentages are yours.”
Wise words from the 17-year-old with 10 A-grade GCSEs under her belt. If the likes of Mz Bratt can reinforce the message that numeracy (let alone literacy) skills have benefits in areas that kids might not otherwise expect, it is no bad thing.
We hereby give Mz Bratt the Doesn’t Need Maths-Whizz Award in recognition of her achievements and good attitude. We hope some others in entertainment, who wear their ignorance with seeming pride, take note.
Education Secretary Ed Balls today re-iterated the government’s commitment to personal tuition for students falling behind in literacy and numeracy, reported today by the BBC.
The £315m already allocated to the scheme would be disbursed amongst the local education authorities. Parents who felt their children were falling through the cracks, and not getting the needed additional help, would be able to appeal via the courts.
As the BBC reports, this system will build on the ‘making good progress’ pilots, which to date have involved:
…short, sharp bursts of intensive one-to-one tuition on top of normal schooling. Typically children have been signed up for 10 hours of personal tuition.
Classes could run either during or outside school hours, a DCSF spokeswoman said.
It would be immodest to suggest that Maths-Whizz is THE ANSWER TO ED BALLS’ PRAYERS, but it’s incumbent on us to point out that, with our online Tutoring Plus service Balls, Brown, et. al. might get a lot more bang for their buck, and achieve much the same improvement in struggling student maths scores, as if they employed breathing human tutors.
The terms of the tutoring boost sessions described above, including the fact that children would be able to learn in-school or out-, are a good fit with the Maths-Whizz method - which allows students to log on anywhere, anytime, for quick sessions on the maths tutor.
I never realised I’d be able to shoehorn maths into possibly yesterday’s biggest news story - the sad and sudden death of Michael Jackson, the ‘King of Pop’ - but it’s incredible what you can dig up online.
And so, for your collective mathematical edification, and in memory of Michael Jackson, a rather silly skit from 1972 featuring Jackson trying to clear a lunch bill with some rather bad maths.
I often cheekily suggest that some of the people featured in the Whizz blog might benefit from a little online maths tuition but, with Michael Jackson, the joke would fall a little flat.
The wives of three English country gentlemen all became pregnant at about the same time. Two of these gentlemen provided the traditional cow hide as a bedcovering, while the third gentleman sent off to Africa for a hippopotamus skin to use as a bed covering for his wife. The first two women each had a boy while the third was blessed with twin boys.
Which goes to show that: The sons of the squires of the hides is equal to the squire of the hippopotamus.
[groan]
Of course, if you’ve forgotten Pythagoras’ theorem, refresh your memory, or just get some top maths tutoring with Whizz.com!
That’s all! Have a lovely weekend…
