‘What is a prime number?’ The home-schooling dilemmas parents are Googling - and the answers

How much do you remember from GCSE maths?

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After Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced on Monday that schools would be closing as part of the national lockdown in England, parents were suddenly faced, once again, with the prospect of weeks of home-schooling.  

As well as many now having to juggle working from home with childcare, others face the prospect of having to perform as a stand-in teacher to supplement online learning.

Do you remember how to convert a fraction into a percentage? Could you name the first five digits of pi? Do you know how to conjugate a verb? 

Unsurprisingly, Google searches for forgotten skills have soared this week. This is, in part, down to the end of the Christmas holidays but, let’s be honest, how many people over 21 can remember how sedimentary rock is formed?

These are some of the school-related search terms that have soared this week.

‘How do you convert fractions into decimals’ - up 3850 per cent 

The answer: Divide the top number in the fraction (the numerator) by the bottom one (the denominator). E.g. ¼ = 0.25.  

‘What is a prime number’ - up 250 per cent 

The answer: A prime number is a number bigger than 1 that can only be divided by itself and one. The number seven is one example.  

‘Personification’ - up 2,250 per cent

The answer: Personification is a literary technique where an author gives an object or an animal a quality only a human can have. E.g. ‘the wind howled’.  

‘PE home learning’ - up 900 per cent

The answer: There are plenty of video guides to doing PE and activities at home - you can find a full guide to what’s out there here. Joe Wicks is also bringing his PE lessons back for lockdown 3.0. Starting from 11 January, he’ll be running live classes on his YouTube channel three times a week on Monday Wednesday and Friday mornings at 9am.  

‘Motifs in Macbeth’ - up 3,800 per cent

The answer: Motifs in literature are literary devices, structures and ideas that are repeated throughout a text. In Macbeth, some examples are hallucinations (for example, when Macbeth sees the floating dagger) and prophecy (e.g. when the witches predict that Macbeth will become king).  

‘How is sedimentary rock formed’ - up 300 per cent

The answer: This kind of rock is formed from the broken bits of other rocks. The broken parts are transported by a river and, when the water reaches the sea or a lake, the bits go to the bottom and are ‘deposited’. The deposited rock builds up in layers (sediments) in a process called sedimentation. Then, the sediments at the bottom are squashed by the weight of the sediments at the top (this is called compaction). Compaction squeezes water out from between the pieces of rock and crystals of different salts form, sticking the pieces of rock together in a process called cementation. The entire process can take millions of years.  

‘Why did the Normans build castles’ - up 400 per cent

The answer: After winning the battle of Hastings against the Anglo-Saxons in 1066, the Normans took control of England. They built castles across the country to maintain control of their newly-won territory.