Do you use Beast Academy maths curriculum and material to supplement your kids' school education or use it for homeschooling? Would love to get your feedback on it. My understanding is it's a stretched type of maths (teachers have Maths Olympiad background) as opposed to repetitive worksheet tutoring a year ahead.
Beast Academy Maths Curriculum and Material for School Education
ihbh on 20/02/2026 - 16:19
Last edited 20/02/2026 - 18:24
Last edited 20/02/2026 - 18:24
Comments
Never used it so cant comment but have a gifted child who was accelerated in maths and will note the following:
- there is a high level of repetition and rote learning in maths for a reason. It may seem boring at young ages, but if not mastered at each step, come Calculus, they fail.
- inappropriate acceleration, missed repetition or failure to embed mathematical principles hits hard. The Australian Curriculum works on a 3 year cycle that slowly builds on the cycle before.
Now, Im not saying accelerated learning isnt appropriate or that students who are completing work shouldn't be stretched. However:
- what are they being accelerated or extended into?
- do they have the foundation for that?
- do they have the foundation for the next step?
Example -
My child was completing Year 9 maths in Year 1. His ability to understand algebra was great. But as the years progressed, the school failed to repeat and embed other things. Fractions were a problem, as was statistics.
By Year 11, I had to get a tutor in to plug gaps from Years 6-10 that was impacting his ability to complete SACE.
Realisticly, he should have done Specialist Maths, but the constant extension was a hindrance long term. It's a failure of long term planning.If you're looking to extend, plan how is that going to look and what is the end goal?
So what you're saying is your child was incorrectly completing year 9 math in year 1? If by year 11 their fundamentals were that busted, doing 'year 9' math in year 1 sounds like it was a great idea…
Ah no.
A child can jump topics. They can learn algerbra without knowing fractions.
If they skip year 6 (he skipped 3, 6, and compressed 9-12), it's possible that chunks get missed.
That's my point - acceleration and extension are not inherently bad. But they must be planned from now until the end point.
In hindsight, not being a maths teacher, I would have gone to a different school and sought a different opinion. As a result of the f up, I got qualified in Gifted Ed myself. 99% of schools have no one qualified in the field and so decisions around acceleration/extension are poorly informed.
Harsh.
We used to get a lot of grade nine kids come in to the centre as they started having difficulty with mixed operation complex fractions.
These were kids who had achieved high marks in previous years. Good, switched on kids who wanted to do well and were prepared to work.
When diagnosing the challenge, the child had learned the rules and procedures, the problems nearly always went back to a failure to master multiplication. Sometimes even subtraction.
It wasn't that they couldn't do it, or didn't know how to do it, they had just never had enough practise to achieve mastery.
If you can't plus, you can't minus.
If you can't multiply, you can't divide.
Can't multiply or divide, you can't do fractions.
Can't + - x or / you can't work with improper fractions.I've come across high schoolers who can barely count forward. So many cannot start at some random number and count backwards, even in ones and twos.
Ask a kid to count forward or backwards in threes and they get anxious. Ask them to do it in sevens and they absolutely shit themselves.
Ask them about common factors and they just have no idea.
Australian kids were so bad at doing long division, they just took it out of the curriculum.
Ask a kid to do double or triple digit addition without showing their carry figures and they wet their pants.
Then they get to area and haven't got a clue because they never mastered their multiplication tables.
Exactly.
Most kids leave primary school unable to rattle of their mutiplication tables.
Which means they are also unable to add, subtract, multiply and divide fractions.
As a result, they are unable to manipulate algebraic expressions in high school, because they didn't master primary school level arithmetric.
@ladybird1: That was definitely my experience. I got in hard and strong for primary school. Just about everybody was scolding me for "pushing them too hard".
I had no confidence in what was then the Qld curriculum, onto Aust curriculum about 2012 I think, which was even worse…
By about grade six, all but one of mine had their math under control and could really pull back and take their foot off the pedal. For them, math was their "bludge" subject.
None of them regret the extra work we did out of school during primary school. Once math was easy, everything else seemed to be easy too.
@Muppet Detector: Likewise, my kids are very glad that I drilled maths into them at primary school.
And, indeed, once maths is "easy" you will have fostered the type of logic and structured thinking that makes other things easy too.
Schools have no idea what to do with primary school kids who needs maths extension. This story does not surprise me in the slightest.
I know of multiple examples where kids were accelerated by someone who does not know how to do that well, ending up with bad outcomes.
I intervened in my kids education and plugged those gaps very early on. And then again at high school level when needed. This ultimately resulted in very strong performance in Methods and Specialist. But most students don't have a parent who can remedy the mistakes made at the school level.
I have the Beast Academy books.
I also have the PR1ME books:
https://www.officeworks.com.au/shop/officeworks/p/pr1me-aus-…My kids needed maths extension, so I thought the Beast Academy books would be a good option.
However, I soon found that although my kids were appently doing extremely well at maths, the school was leaving many many gaps in their knowledge.
As a previous poster said, there is a very good educational reason to do enough "drill" for students to master a maths topic before moving on. Unlike other subjects, maths build very heavily on foundations put in place in earlier years. If you leave gaps in that foundation, it is hard to recover.
The maths curriculum taught in school leaves gaps. Many gaps. I found the PR1ME books to be a good way to plug those gaps at the primary school level. The student "practice books" provided sufficient drill.
At the high school level, further gap-plugging is needed, particularly around the Yr 10 stage.
As far as enrichment goes, Beast Academy has some nice things in it here are there, that quite appeal to me (as someone who works in a highly mathematical occupation). However, my kids found it tedious.
Instead, we found the APSMO maths olympiad questions to be an excellent enrichment activity:
https://www.amazon.com.au/APSMO-Maths-Olympiad-Contest-Probl…
I've never heard of this before, so following along to learn about it. I hope it's good!
Are you thinking books or online?
And what does this mean?
understanding is it's a stretched type of maths
Do you mean that it follows a horizontal curriculum?
as opposed to repetitive worksheet tutoring a year ahead.
Some of those basics, you've just got to power through and repeat until you have instant recall and have achieved mastery.
Books.
It's problem solving based, not being fast with basic stuff. But those with more aptitude will naturally be faster and those that enjoy practice and practice, tend to be slower, because they wouldn't have seen the problem before.
Some of those basics, you've just got to power through and repeat until you have instant recall and have achieved mastery.
Agreed. But if you're an average kid, even if you're Speedy Gonzales, you're going to be way out of your depth with say the Maths Olympiad or lower level maths competitions.
Thought this was some scam e-commerce course
beast is so 2025
in 2026 its the trapezoid Academy maths curriculum
My kid used it when he was in primary and he loved maths so he loved Beast Academy- we was totally engaged with it. The online version, the books were less useful (he did use the workbooks though).
Good resource if the kid enjoys the subject, not a good resource if maths is seen as a chore.
Our challenge was that after it, it was hard to find a continuation. I think the same organisation runs Art of Problem Solving which is mostly US timezone.
to supplement your kids' school education
I'm not sure about the idea of 'supplementing' here. At least in NSW. Maths here is so utterly backwards that beast academy didn't really seem to have much to do with what he encountered in primary school, but part of that was also moving from an Asian city with an IB based curriculum to the NSW stone-age system.
I’ve not used it but heard it recommended often for kids disengaged with primary school maths and homeschoolers. I don’t know if it avoids repetition, but it is supposed to present maths in a more interesting way (I think the workbooks have comic strips in them?) so it’s applied to solve a problem rather than the worksheets filled with rows of the same question with different variables.
My kids have both done Kumon for 3 odd years and found that quite good.
My younger one who has just started Year 7 we are looking to enrol in Singapore Maths as it is more worded problem solving rather than just straight maths.
Online we have found Khan Academy quite a good tool, which is free of charge, and also provides other subjects apart from maths.
I think you need to review child individually and determine what their specific needs are and find the best tool that addresses those needs.
As others have mentioned Maths is one you don't want to fall behind in, as its a struggle to catch up againThanks for your feedback.
We home school and use some of the activities from Mindset Maths as a framework and follow the NSW curriculum. We've been exploring Beast Academy and also Singapore Maths to be our main source teaching material, and give the kids practice to reinforce their learnings, rather than my wife having to pull it from different sources. We're also looking at the Khan Academy, but my wife wants to avoid a lot of screen time.
We had a professional background where we're supposed to be good at maths, but only did first year uni maths, and a smattering of statistics. My wife who does the bulk of the teaching, tries to match the kid's learning style where possible. They are probably average/above average, but we don't compare them to anyone else - definitely not gifted like the girl down the street who was doing calculus for fun before her early teens.
We considered Beast Academy because of their comic style, problem solving approach and deep understanding (vs trying to teach a year ahead) which might match better with both kids' interest, and ours. Although we acknowledge that there's the hard yakka needed to get the basics right as a solid foundation for the future. For example, when I was doing high school maths, I was happy to read the 4 unit maths text book myself and pretty much self learn and did well with this approach. However, most kids would find this very dry and strongly resist this approach (guiding the kids through a textbook by us).
The point about the many gaps in the curriculum is definitely something we agree with. For example, being able to estimate things is very important, e.g. our previous line of work, case interviews for management consultants (and their work), and just doing sanity checks, etc., and Beast Academy calls it out explicitly and emphasizes some other areas as well, and is another reason we were asking for experiences/feedback about it.
Do you use Beast Academy curriculum and material to supplement your kids' school education or use it for homeschooling?
No
What’s the point?
According to Musk we are all gonna be replaced by AI and we can just stay home (if you still have one) and get drunk
Gotta be able to count the empty bottles and calculate your darts score.
Same could be said of totally irrelevant posts on forums. Only AI would still be more pertinent.
Is it named after Mr Beast??… which would not surprise me because he’s got his name on everything (just saw him doing a collab with beef jerky!)