Dyscalculia is a persistent difficulty in understanding numbers, which can complicate how children learn mathematics - and there is probably a child in your class who has it.
The condition is present in pupils of all ages and abilities and is thought to occur in 3 to 6 per cent of the population.
This equates to an average of about 1.4 children in every class of 30 - meaning that it is almost inevitable that, over time, you will teach many young people with dyscalculia.
However, unlike with some other learning difficulties, such as dyslexia, research into dyscalculia is still relatively embryonic - although our understanding is getting better.
Rob Jennings is head of maths at Emerson House, a learning centre for children with special educational needs in West London. He is also co-founder of the Dyscalculia Network, which seeks to raise awareness about dyscalculia and spread better understanding.
Dyscalculia: What teachers need to know
Here, he explains what teachers need to know about the condition.
How would you define dyscalculia?
A lot of people don’t know what it is or are not aware of it. Dyscalculia is a specific and persistent difficulty in understanding numbers, but it’s not a clear-cut thing. It’s the end of a spectrum of maths difficulties. A child could be anywhere on that spectrum, but dyscalculia is where there are severe and persistent difficulties.
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Who does it affect?
It’s not just children-specific. In fact, as we publicise what dyscalculia is and make more people aware of it, a lot of adults are coming out of the woodwork and asking what they can do to address their difficulties.
It doesn’t affect certain age groups or genders, or different parts of the country. It’s pretty generic across the board - and it can occur independently of other special educational needs, although they can also occur together. For instance, you can have someone who has dyslexia, dyspraxia (developmental coordination disorder) and also dyscalculia.
What might a child with dyscalculia struggle with that others would not?
When we’re working with dyscalculic children, they might not be able to appreciate which number is bigger between five or six - it means nothing to them, it is arbitrary, it could be a foreign language. They are not aware of the relative size of the two numbers.
Another thing they might struggle with is subitising, which is the ability to be able to view small groups of things - say, four or five dots - and not have to count them to know how many there are. When you’re working with a dyscalculic child, they might have to count them out, no matter how small the group is.
What techniques can be used to support pupils with dyscalculia?
The best thing a teacher can do is to be on the lookout for these maths difficulties, these indicators. Simply identifying these things at an early age means there is the best chance to put into place a plan to help that child.
Once the indicators are identified, the next stage will be to have a full assessment from a maths specialist to provide a diagnostic overview of the pupil’s strengths and weaknesses so you can put into place a really focused intervention plan. It really needs to be targeted intervention aimed at where things started to go wrong.
I view it as being like a Jenga tower: no matter how high you make it in terms of advanced level maths, if there are bricks missing it’s going to be wobbly and, ultimately- fall over. Any intervention needs to be pulled right back to where the problems started to occur.
How might these interventions work in the classroom?
Teachers need to be ready to adjust their approach to accommodate the individual, where possible. For example, when they’re teaching a new topic, it needs to be done really slowly and carefully with lots of revision and repetition.
One of the good experiences we’ve had is with breaking down tasks into smaller chunks. So, if you have a 55-minute maths lesson, if you can break it down into five bite-sized chunks of 10 minutes with a rebooting session in between, that’s much more effective.
Confidence is key. I think we often focus wrongly on what pupils got wrong, whereas we need to compliment and build up successes as well. So before you’re teaching a topic or going over a topic, it’s good to celebrate some success so that the dyscalculic pupils can feel good about themselves. This will give them the ability to move on to the next task.
What about if you have a larger class and struggle to provide that level of individualised support?
Within a large classroom, there are certain things you can do in terms of scaffolding - so you could provide an outline of what a lesson involves for the child with dyscalculia, so they don’t get lost halfway through.
You might also then scale down the difficulty in questions or you might introduce pictorial representation for some aspects. For example, with fractions, you might show a pizza cut up into quarters, so that they can visualise it. That kind of multi-sensory approach really does benefit these pupils.
It might mean extra preparation for the teacher, but it will certainly benefit the child in the longer term.
Are there any myths about dyscalculia that need to be busted?
Dyscalculia is relatively unknown in the public domain. There’s an acceptance about being bad at maths, and feeling that you don’t have to worry about that - so the bar is sometimes set quite low, and that’s viewed as kind of OK, whereas people are less likely to just accept that someone is bad at reading.
I think another problem with dyscalculia is how it looks. It is sometimes perceived as an individual just being lazy. It can seem to people like they’re not trying hard enough, whereas, in fact, when you have dyscalculia, you have to try twice as hard - your brain is working hard to get to the root problem. The research shows dyscalculia is related to differences in the brain, and that kids can’t control that.
What needs to happen next to improve support across the education sector?
There is a huge shortage of specialist maths teachers, so by promoting awareness of dyscalculia and developing some courses to help educate people about it, we hope that people will start to say “that’s me”, or “that’s my child - what can I do about it?”
We get inundated with questions about what to do. The next stage for us is to help develop more maths specialists.
Chris Parr is a freelance journalist
