Struggling with maths is more common than you might think. Studies suggest that around 40% of students feel anxious or uncomfortable during maths lessons — and for many, that feeling follows them well into adulthood. But here’s what the research actually tells us: being “bad at maths” is rarely a fixed trait. It’s almost always a skills gap, a confidence gap, or a strategy gap. The good news? All three are fixable.
Whether you’re a Year 7 student tackling algebra for the first time, a Year 11 student preparing for VCE or HSC maths exams, or an adult learner looking to sharpen your numeracy skills, the strategies in this guide are grounded in cognitive science and real learning outcomes. No fluff. No generic advice. Just what actually works.
Let’s break it down.
Why Most People Struggle With Maths (And Why It’s Not Your Fault)
Before diving into strategies, it’s worth understanding why maths feels so hard for so many people.
The biggest reason isn’t intelligence — it’s foundational gaps. Maths is a cumulative subject. Every new concept builds on something you were supposed to learn before. If you missed or misunderstood fractions in Year 5, decimals in Year 6 will feel confusing. If decimals are shaky, percentages and ratios in Year 7 become a mystery. By the time students reach high school algebra or geometry, they may be carrying years of unresolved confusion.
The second big reason is maths anxiety — a real, measurable psychological response that interferes with working memory. When you’re stressed or anxious about maths, your brain literally has less cognitive resources available to solve problems. It becomes a self-reinforcing cycle: anxiety leads to poor performance, which increases anxiety.
The strategies below address both issues directly.
1. Build a Strong Foundation Before Moving Forward
The single most impactful thing you can do to get better at maths is to go back and fill in the gaps.
Most students try to push forward through new content when they don’t understand it, hoping it will eventually make sense. It rarely does. Instead, identify exactly where your understanding breaks down and work from there.
Practical steps:
- Attempt problems from previous year levels and note where you get stuck.
- Use diagnostic tools or take a maths assessment to pinpoint weak areas.
- Spend time on fundamentals like place value, fractions, multiplication, and basic algebra before tackling advanced content.
At Mastering Maths Online, students go through an initial skills check so learning is targeted at exactly the right level — not too easy, not too far ahead.
This approach is sometimes called mastery learning, and it’s one of the most well-supported instructional methods in educational research. Students who master each step before moving on consistently outperform those who rush through a curriculum.
2. Understand Concepts — Don’t Just Memorise Procedures
There’s a big difference between knowing how to do something in maths and knowing why it works. Students who only memorise steps tend to fall apart the moment a question is presented in a slightly different format. Students who understand the underlying concept can adapt.
For example: rather than memorising “to divide fractions, flip and multiply,” try to understand why that rule works. What does dividing by a fraction actually mean? What happens visually when you divide something into thirds?
Conceptual understanding leads to:
- Better problem-solving flexibility
- Longer retention of knowledge
- Less study time in the long run (because you’re not constantly re-memorising forgotten rules)
When you’re studying, ask yourself: “Do I understand why this works, or am I just following steps?” If it’s the latter, slow down and investigate the concept more deeply.
3. Practise Daily — Even for Just 20 Minutes
Maths is a skill, and skills are built through consistent, deliberate practice — not cramming. Research on spaced repetition and skill acquisition shows that short, regular practice sessions are far more effective than long, infrequent ones.
Twenty minutes of focused maths practice every day will outperform a two-hour session once a week. Your brain consolidates learning during rest periods, which means spacing out practice gives knowledge time to “stick.”
A sustainable daily routine might look like:
- 5 minutes reviewing something from a previous lesson
- 10 minutes working through new problems
- 5 minutes checking your answers and understanding your errors
Consistency matters more than intensity. Think of it like building fitness — you don’t get stronger from one big workout. You improve through regular, progressive training.
4. Embrace Mistakes as Learning Data
One of the biggest mindset shifts that separates students who improve quickly from those who plateau is their relationship with mistakes.
Students who see a wrong answer as evidence that they “can’t do maths” tend to avoid challenging problems and disengage over time. Students who treat mistakes as data — useful feedback about exactly where their understanding is incomplete — improve rapidly.
Every time you get a problem wrong, ask:
- Did I make an arithmetic error (careless mistake)?
- Did I use the wrong method (procedural gap)?
- Did I not understand what the question was asking (conceptual gap)?
Each type of error requires a different response. Careless mistakes are fixed with slower, more careful working. Procedural gaps need more practice. Conceptual gaps need more explanation and investigation.
Carol Dweck’s research on growth mindset has shown clearly that students who believe their abilities can improve with effort achieve significantly better outcomes than those who believe intelligence is fixed.
5. Work Through Problems Step-by-Step (And Show Your Working
Maths anxiety often pushes students to rush — to skip steps and try to jump straight to the answer. This is one of the most counterproductive habits in maths learning.
Always show your working. This isn’t just a classroom rule — it’s cognitively effective. Writing each step:
- Forces you to slow down and think clearly
- Makes it easier to find where you went wrong
- Trains you to develop structured mathematical reasoning
When practising, resist the urge to check the answer immediately. Work through the problem completely, then compare. If your answer is wrong, trace back through your steps to find the error rather than just looking at the solution.
This method, known as error analysis, is one of the most powerful tools for accelerating maths improvement.
6. Master Mental Maths and Number Sense
Before you can confidently tackle complex algebra, calculus, or statistics, you need a strong sense of number. Number sense refers to a flexible, intuitive understanding of how numbers work — their size, their relationships, and how operations affect them.
Students with good number sense can:
- Estimate answers before calculating (and know when their answer looks wrong)
- Break numbers apart and recombine them to simplify calculations
- Spot patterns and relationships between numbers
Ways to build number sense:
- Practise mental arithmetic daily — addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division without a calculator
- Estimate before you calculate, then compare the estimate to your answer
- Work with fractions, decimals, and percentages regularly to understand how they relate to each other
7. Use Active Recall Instead of Passive Re-Reading
One of the most well-evidenced strategies in cognitive science is active recall — testing yourself on material rather than simply re-reading notes or watching videos.
Re-reading feels productive because it’s comfortable and familiar. But familiarity isn’t the same as learning. When you re-read notes, you’re essentially recognising information you’ve already seen — which doesn’t build the same retrieval pathways as actually trying to remember it from scratch.
Active recall techniques include:
- Flashcards — write a maths concept or formula on one side, the explanation or example on the other
- Practice problems from memory — close your notes and attempt problems without any prompts
- The Feynman Technique — try to explain a concept out loud as if you’re teaching someone else. Gaps in your explanation reveal gaps in your understanding.
Studies by cognitive scientists Roediger and Karpicke have consistently found that students who use active recall outperform those who study passively — even when the passive-study group spends more time studying.
8. Space Out Your Study With Spaced Repetition
Closely related to active recall is spaced repetition — the practice of reviewing material at increasing intervals over time. The idea is based on the “forgetting curve” — first identified by Hermann Ebbinghaus — which shows that memory decays predictably but can be strengthened by reviewing at the right moments.
In practice, spaced repetition means:
- Reviewing new maths concepts the day after you learn them
- Revisiting them again 3 days later
- Then a week later
- Then a fortnight later
Each review session should involve active recall (testing yourself), not passive re-reading. Over time, material you’ve reviewed this way becomes deeply embedded in long-term memory — which is exactly what you need going into an exam.
Many digital platforms use spaced repetition algorithms automatically. For maths specifically, maintaining a rolling review of past topics alongside new ones is the most effective way to ensure nothing slips.
9. Seek Targeted Help — Don’t Struggle Alone for Too Long
There’s a fine line between productive struggle (which builds resilience and problem-solving ability) and unproductive confusion (which entrenches misconceptions and erodes confidence). Knowing the difference is important.
If you’ve attempted a problem multiple times and genuinely cannot identify where you’re going wrong, it’s time to seek help. Waiting too long to ask creates compounding confusion — especially in a subject as sequential as maths.
Effective sources of help include:
- A qualified maths tutor who can identify gaps and explain concepts in a way that resonates with how you learn
- Online maths courses with clear worked examples and structured progression
- Peer study groups where you can talk through problems and explain your reasoning to others
Research consistently shows that explaining maths to someone else is one of the most powerful ways to solidify your own understanding. Teaching forces you to articulate your thinking, which quickly reveals what you do and don’t actually understand.
If you’re looking for structured, evidence-based support, explore the online maths programs at Mastering Maths Online — designed for Australian students from primary school through senior secondary.
10. Connect Maths to the Real World
Abstract maths is harder to engage with than maths you can see and feel. One of the most effective ways to build genuine interest and motivation — both of which are strongly correlated with learning outcomes — is to connect what you’re learning to the real world.
This might look like:
- Calculating the better deal when shopping (unit prices, percentages off)
- Understanding how compound interest works when thinking about savings or debt
- Reading a graph or chart in the news and being able to interpret what it actually means
- Working out distances, speeds, or travel times on a road trip
When maths feels relevant and purposeful, it becomes much easier to engage with and remember. For younger students, this might be as simple as measuring ingredients when baking. For older students, it might mean exploring how statistical reasoning applies to sport, health data, or climate science.
The broader point is this: maths is not a school subject disconnected from real life. It’s a language for understanding the world. The more you see it that way, the more naturally your skills will develop.
Putting It All Together: A Weekly Maths Study Plan
Here’s a practical weekly structure that incorporates the evidence-based strategies above:
Monday, Wednesday, Friday — 20 minutes of focused practice on current topics (show all working, no calculator for mental maths drills)
Tuesday, Thursday — 15 minutes of spaced repetition review of older topics (use flashcards or practice problems from memory)
Saturday — 30–40 minutes of problem-solving practice, including some challenging problems that require applying multiple concepts
Sunday — Rest, or light review of any concept that felt shaky during the week
This adds up to roughly 2–2.5 hours of maths study per week — modest, manageable, and highly effective when structured this way.
Final Thoughts
Getting better at maths is less about talent and more about method. The students who improve fastest aren’t always the ones who work the longest hours — they’re the ones who study smart, address their foundational gaps, practise consistently, and treat mistakes as feedback rather than failure.
Every strategy in this guide is backed by educational research, not guesswork. The question is not whether they work — they do. The question is whether you’ll apply them consistently.
Start with just one or two of the strategies above. Build the habit. Then layer in more over time. Maths ability is not fixed. With the right approach, it’s something anyone can improve.
