Singapore: Parents take primary school maths classes

Dust off your calculators: Parents are going back to school so they can understand their children's homework

Parents in Singapore are taking primary school maths classes in order to understand what their children go through, it's been reported.

Adults are signing up for tuition so they can be helpful when their children have questions, the My Paper website reports. Parents at a "mastery workshop" run by one tuition centre pay $700 (£463) to spend eight hours learning how to solve maths problems, the website says. It's part of a growing trend in Singapore, where extra tuition for children is a booming business worth more then $1bn (£660m).

Parents are divided into ability groups depending on their existing knowledge and ability, just like in schools. "Some parents come to the workshop with zero maths knowledge, so we have to go very slowly," Nur Hidayah Ismail, the principal of the Genius Young Minds centre, tells the website. Some parents say it has helped them to understand their children's struggles. But for others who left the subject behind many years ago, things are more tricky. Mohd Yusof Maruwi attended a class with his wife, and found the first question "so difficult", he says. "Luckily, my wife could understand what was going on."

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