Maths was my dodgy subject, but - and its something my daughter failed to heed, theres no running away from it in engineering or in her case, Genetics, she dropped it at AS/A and is paying the price right now.
However, I took the ONC/HNC route with maths taught at higher level for the HNC, which meant the 'Maths' was actually taught with 'Engineering' in mind, thus the direct relevance was clear - not always true with pure maths. And (to my delight) I got a Merit and not far off a distinction. The frightening thing being that this would have been the entry level to a degree course in order to avoid a one year foundation. Embrace it, counquer it, or fail.
But heres an example of how things change, at ONC we were taught vectors and trig. At HNC we tackled the same thing using J notation - why learn two things? I suppose the concept of vectors can be explained using trig as an introduction and when the foundations grasped, followed later by a system with J. Frankly once I'd got the hang of J I cursed the months doing vectors..Anyway its got me through 28 years of employment.