Children with dyscalculia have difficulty understanding numbers, hindering progress in mathematics. Dyscalculia often occurs with other conditions like dyslexia, dyspraxia or ADHD/ADD. It affects approximately 5% of the population, and is as likely to affect girls as boys.

According to the British Dyslexia Association older children with dyscalculia may:

• have difficulty when counting backwards

• have a poor sense of numbers and estimation

• have difficulty in remembering 'basic' facts, despite many hours of practice/rote learning

• have no strategies to compensate for lack of recall, other than to use counting

• have difficulty in understanding place value and the role of zero in the Arabic/Hindu number system

• have no sense of whether any answers that are obtained are right or nearly right

• be slower to perform calculations. (Therefore give fewer examples, rather than more time)

• forget mathematical procedures, especially as they become more complex, for example 'long' division. Addition is often the default operation and the other operations are usually very poorly executed (or avoided altogether)

• avoid tasks that are perceived as difficult and likely to result in a wrong answer

• have weak mental arithmetic skills

• have high levels of mathematics anxiety

Some useful resources on dyscalculia can be found using the following links:

https://dyscalculianetwork.com/

The Dyscalculia Centre: https://dyscalculia.me.uk/

A video on what it is like to have dyscalculia: https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=4wjO9JoAFIA&safe=true

A Young BBC reporter talks about her experences with dyscalculia: https://www.google.com/search?q=sophie+ellis+bextor+dyscalculia&rlz=1C1GCEA_enGB940GB940&oq=sophie+ellis+bextor+dyscalculia&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUyBggAEEUYOTIKCAEQABiABBiiBDIKCAIQABiABBiiBDIKCAMQABiABBiiBDIKCAQQABiABBiiBNIBCDk0NjRqMGo0qAIAsAIA&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:b7003dbf,vid:jsgAFn2zgxg,st:0

Sophie Ellis-Bextor talks about parenting children with dyscalculia: https://www.google.com/search?q=sophie+ellis+bextor+dyscalculia&rlz=1C1GCEA_enGB940GB940&oq=sophie+ellis+bextor+dyscalculia&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUyBggAEEUYOTIKCAEQABiABBiiBDIKCAIQABiABBiiBDIKCAMQABiABBiiBDIKCAQQABiABBiiBNIBCDk0NjRqMGo0qAIAsAIA&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:b7003dbf,vid:jsgAFn2zgxg,st:0