Perth Maths Club is Expanding

Scone Green Bridge, between Scone and Perth

Since 2019, Perth Baptist Church have run a maths club on their premises for secondary school students. James Gill and his team meet every Tuesday from 3:45-5:30 o’clock after school during term time, to help anyone who needs extra time to study maths. They offer snacks and refreshments for the young people, who come from nearby high schools Perth Academy and Perth High, while they complete their homework or work on exam revision. The leaders are always on hand to help, and make sure that the pupils are always busy with practice exercises, mathematical puzzles or problems to solve. They have compiled folders of worksheets and past paper questions.

The team is currently made up of seven adults, all retired professionals, including a member of Perth North Church of Scotland. Two of the seven are retired Maths teachers, James and Mike, who began the whole adventure. Mike is a member of Tayside Christian Fellowship. Last year, they had sixty names of young people on the register, though never had more than thirty-eight attend at any one session. At the end of the year they organise an annual barbecue to celebrate the end of exams, inviting the families of the young people, and in December they hand out ‘Christmas bags’ with chocolates, a seasonal card with a list of the festive services at the church, Christmas-themed maths puzzles and a Christmas Gospel message.

The club has been a community cornerstone for the past seven years, originally helping S4-S6 pupils with a subject that is challenging in its complexity and necessity for achieving at National 5 and Higher and Advanced Higher grades, giving them space to consolidate learning in a supportive and comfortable environment outside of the classroom. Following requests from parents, in 2024 the club opened to anyone in S1-S6 and managed to recruit new members to the team to cope with the resulting influx.

However, recently they noticed that parents were coming over from Scone, a town to the northeast of Perth, to collect young people who were in the catchment area for Perth Academy after the club. This left parents braving the traffic around the city during the busiest part of the day - and residents of the Perthshire area will know how congested the roads around Perth can get! To help these parents and meet this need, the team decided to try to start another maths club based in Scone.

So, in January of 2026, Perth Baptist Church launched their second maths club. The library in Scone offered their space free of charge, some church members volunteered to organise refreshments, and they recruited two retired Maths teachers from James' team - one a member of Perth Methodist Church, the other a member of the Nazarene Church in Perth - who live around Scone to lead it, along with a retired Chemistry teacher who attends Tayside Christian Fellowship (also in Perth) and a retired Physics teacher who is based in Scone. It also runs on a Tuesday after school until 5:30, and means that pupils could get the bus home and go straight to the club, without needing to be picked up by their parents. It’s still in the early stages, with only two clients before the summer, but they are very appreciative of the effort the team put in. Both did really well and there are signs of more interest. Please pray that the club continues to expand in this new school year.

Here is some feedback from parents and alumni of the club:

‘Maths club has been a real gift. In school my daughters don’t always feel they can ask questions, but maths club is different. It’s a place they can ask questions freely and those helping are patient, encouraging and approachable. It’s not only been an enjoyable and welcoming place for my daughters to go to but it’s also made them more confident and progress in their maths! We are very thankful for the maths club at Perth Baptist church.’

‘Both my children attended from S3 and the teachers really helped them build their confidence in maths. My son took maths all the way to Advanced Higher level and achieved an A, and particularly benefitted from the generous support offered by the teachers. It was very helpful for them to have access to clear explanations from experienced maths teachers when they were learning new concepts. They both enjoyed the tea and kitkats too.’

‘I can confidently say that I’m only where I am now because of the maths club. They helped me with previous past SQA papers as well as homework, taking the time to sit down with everyone individually when needed to explain their individual equations and where they were going wrong, while never making you feel silly for not understanding. And as said, I wouldn’t have been able to achieve the grade I did without their help.’