Practical Maths Resources for Teachers of Electrical and Plumbing Apprentices

Written for tutors in FE colleges and training providers in the UK, but the approach applies in most English-speaking nations.

If you teach electrical installation or plumbing and heating, you already know the problem. Your learners can strip, terminate, bend and solder well, then freeze when a calculation appears. Voltage drop, cable sizing, pipe volume, heating flow rates: these are the questions that hold back learners who are otherwise good at the job, and they often decide whether someone passes their theory exams.

Most maths resources available to teachers are not built for this. This article explains why, what works better, and what the Practical Maths courses from Trade Skills Hub Academy give electrical and plumbing tutors.

I write as a former FE lecturer. For more than five years I lectured and assessed City & Guilds Level 3 Electrical Installation, teaching apprentice groups and nearly 200 full-time learners, and before that I spent over 40 years in the electrical trade. I hold a Certificate in Education, the Level 3 assessor award and a Level 4 internal quality assurance award. The Practical Maths courses grew out of what I saw work, and not work, in the classroom.

Why general maths resources don’t work for trade learners

Search for maths resources or mathematics resources and almost everything you find is written for schools: key stage worksheets, GCSE revision and exam practice. They are good at what they do, but they teach maths as a subject in its own right, with examples about train timetables and shopping bills.

Many trade learners have already been through that once and come out of it convinced they are “no good at maths”. Give them the same style of material again and they switch off. Even when they do learn the method, it often doesn’t transfer. A learner who can rearrange an equation on a worksheet may still be stuck when the same rearrangement turns up as I = P ÷ V in a circuit design question.

There is a second problem for vocational tutors. The maths your learners need is not in the order a school curriculum teaches it. They need transposition early, because Ohm’s law and the power formulas depend on it. They need squares and square roots for power and pipe area, and percentages for voltage drop limits. A generic maths scheme won’t get them there at the right point in your course.

What practical, contextualised maths looks like

The approach that works is to teach each maths skill through the job it is used for. The maths is the same; the context is what changes the learner’s response:

• Percentages become voltage drop: is 9 V acceptable on a 230 V power circuit with a 5% limit?
• Transposition becomes finding the maximum cable length a circuit can have before it fails voltage drop.
• Area and volume become working out how many litres a heating system holds, so the right amount of inhibitor goes in.
• Squares become understanding why doubling the current through a loose connection gives four times the heat.
• Division and unit conversion become a bucket test on a cold main to check the flow before fitting a combi boiler.

When learners can see what an answer means, they can also see when it is wrong. A cable that needs to be 400 mm², or a radiator circuit that holds 3,000 litres, is obviously a mistake. That self-checking is what you want on site, and it is very hard to build from abstract worksheets.

Maths in electrical apprenticeships and courses

Electrical mathematics runs through every level of electrical installation training. Learners on Level 2 and Level 3 diplomas, and apprentices on Level 3 apprenticeships, have to handle Ohm’s law and the power formulas, voltage drop, cable sizing with correction factors, expected R1 + R2 values and the interpretation of test results. The same calculations come back in the AM2 assessment.

Many of the people applying for electrician apprenticeships are adults changing career. Electrician apprenticeships for adults bring in learners with good work habits, but some have not done any maths for twenty years or more. They need a way back in that respects their experience and doesn’t feel like being back at school.

Maths in plumbing and heating qualifications

Plumbing and heating learners face the same pattern. Plumber qualifications in the UK, from Level 2 diplomas through to the NVQ Level 3 in plumbing and heating and heating engineer apprenticeships, rely on calculations such as pipe volume, flow rate, heat loss, radiator sizing and system volume. Learners who can’t work confidently with π × r², units and decimal places struggle with the system design work that sets a Level 3 plumber or heating engineer apart.

What tutors need from maths resources for teaching

From my time in FE, a useful set of resources for teaching mathematics to trade learners needs to do five things. It should teach every skill through trade examples, so learners see the point. It should follow the order your vocational course needs, not a school curriculum. It should include worked examples that model the method step by step, because that is how learners check their own work. It should give practice questions at more than one level, so you can stretch stronger learners and support weaker ones in the same group. And it should be ready to teach, so you are not building your own material in the evenings.

The Trade Skills Hub Academy Practical Maths courses

Trade Skills Hub Academy publishes two Practical Maths courses, written for tutors to deliver:

• Practical Maths for Electrical Installation Students & Apprentices
• Practical Maths for Plumbing & Heating Students & Apprentices

Each course is tutor-facing teaching material for FE colleges, independent training providers and apprenticeship programmes. It teaches the maths each trade needs, in the context of that trade, using the worked-example approach described above. You can see the style in two of our free articles: one on the calculations every electrical student has to master, and one on how to calculate pipe volume and flow rate.

Each course costs £299, or you can buy both for £499, which suits colleges that run both electrical and plumbing provision.

For learners, each course has a matching Practical Maths paperback workbook for Electrical Learners and a Practical Maths workbook for Plumbing Learners available on Amazon. Learners can use it alongside your sessions to practise at their own pace, revise before exams and keep as a reference once they qualify.

Who the courses are for

The courses are designed for electrical installation and plumbing and heating tutors and assessors, curriculum managers looking to strengthen maths within vocational programmes, apprenticeship providers whose learners struggle with the calculation elements of their qualifications, and maths and functional skills staff who want trade-relevant material to use with vocational groups.

The bottom line

Trade learners don’t need more maths worksheets. They need maths taught through the work they have chosen to do, by tutors who have ready-made material to do it with. If your electrical or plumbing learners are losing marks, and confidence, on calculations, the Practical Maths courses are built to fix that.

Details of both courses are on the Trade Skills Hub Academy website. For questions about the courses, or about using them across a department, email info@tradeskillshubacademy.com.