A recent report shows that 1 in 2 maths teachers aren’t qualified to teach you maths. With maths failure rates on the rise every year, most of you need all the help you can get in this subject…

But lets be honest, grinds will cost you a bomb if you’re gonna make any progress (all those 1 hour lessons add up). Easter revision courses might help but they’re expensive and you have to give up your easter break.

The Digital Life Saver

One cheaper and potentially more productive option available to you might be e-software called ‘accelerate learning maths’ produced by a company called ‘outstanding solutions’. They’ve kindly given me a copy which i’ve been playing with for the past few days.

I’m as sceptical as you are when it comes to paid online tutorials or software which promises the world (for a tidy little sum of course!). As a student myself (all be it a college student), i never like paying for anything education related but i can safely say having spent the last few days really studying this software, it’s worth every cent of it’s €49 price tag (for higher level) or €65 (ordinary level). Read on further to get details about an exclusive theleavingcert.com offer…

I hated maths at school and it was my only ordinary subject. I had the ability to do higher level maths, but i couldn’t have been bothered putting in the work that’s required to get a good grade in higher maths… part of the reason for me hating maths was the course and the way it was taught. When i started college, guess what – i had another maths subject again and failed it this time (forcing me in to studying my ass off all summer to pass a repeat exam).

photo credit: FotoBart

It was just assumed in school that we had the same enthusiasm for maths as the teacher. It was never explained to us where maths could be used in real life or where certain theories came from etc.. i need to be able to find a use in real life for things i learn otherwise they’re no good to me! After just a few minutes of looking at this dvd, it was explained to me why we use letters in maths and where that idea orginated. They’re the small little things that don’t necessarily make maths interesting, but they help me understand maths and if i understand it, i increase my chances of getting better results.

So if you’re like me and aren’t motivated when it comes to maths, the tutorials are easy to follow and there’s plenty of explanation along the way. At times, examples seem to fly by and i get that familiar ‘what the…’ feeling but the beauty of these tutorials is that you can replay them. As many times as you want.

Why we like it

You can’t replay a maths class in school or replay a grinds lesson, so quite often you’ll forget important bits or forget how an example worked. I know i’m a disaster for just writing down answers and not writing down steps. I might understand how i arrived at the answer today, but i’ll probably forget the steps i took by tomorrow and that’s where the benefits of video tutorials come in.

You have no excuses… you can’t say you didn’t have the steps written down. You can’t say you missed that subject because you were off that day… everything you need to know is on this dvd and it’s easy to use and navigate to different topics.

How it works

For the higher level package, you get two discs (one for each paper). For the ordinary package you get one disc. On the ordinary level disc, you have a paper one and paper two section. You’ve a few different options as to ‘how’ you start to learn…

If you’re completely clueless, obviously starting in to exam questions isn’t going to help you, so you can take ‘theory tutorials’. On pretty much any topic you want. This allows you to sit back and absorb information, look at examples and how they’re constructed etc…

Once you start getting confident, you can move to the ‘grinds’ section (where you can take exam questions). You’re encouraged to come up with answers and then compare your answers to the actual solution (which is eventually given & explained bit by bit).

You can also monitor your own progress in past exam papers using a ‘progress’ section or if you’re getting fed up, you can enter a ‘prepare’ zone which allows you to chill out with some soothing classical music and images. Taking breaks is important and i’ve spoken about how music is proven to help you study before, so they really have thought about everything with this software..

Our Verdict

If i had a leaving cert maths exam tomorrow, i wouldn’t call up an old teacher and get grinds. I wouldn’t buy past papers and maths books or get solutions… i’d buy this software because it has all of that. Grind lessons, past papers, solutions, maths books… it’s got the whole lot crammed in to a dvd. It’s the swiss army knife for leaving cert maths and it gets a massive thumbs up from me. But why trust me? Download a free one hour demo version and check it out for yourself.

Exclusive Offer

We’ve been talking with Outstanding Solutions and managed to get you guys a 15% discount on both higher and ordinary level packages. This is a limited offer which will run for just a couple of weeks so don’t say you weren’t warned. Once it expires and you have to pay full whack. You can buy the software through this link.

Full Disclosure

By the way, we don’t do loving relationships on theleavingcert.com, so we weren’t paid or pushed to review this software. We speak our minds and if we don’t like something, we’ll either not bother talking about it or we’ll say we don’t like it Oustanding Solutions kindly gave us a review copy of their software, we liked it, reviewed it and later agreed on that temporary 15% discount for you guys.