What is Dyscalculia?

Dyscalculia is a specific and persistent difficulty understanding numbers.

Those with dyscalculia have difficulty with number sense, including ordering, subitising and magnitude comparison. Dyscalculia occurs across the age and ability range and is often, although not always, associated with a medical or other specific learning difficulty.

It is estimated that about 25% of people have maths learning difficulties but about 6% have dyscalculia.

The difference occurs due to the severity of difficulties of understanding and working with numbers and quantities. It is thought that around 60% of those with dyslexia will have maths learning difficulties.

Those with maths anxiety, those who have poor experiences of maths teaching and learning and those with school absence may also have maths learning difficulties.

What is a Diagnostic Assessment?

A Diagnostic Assessment for dyscalculia is a series of short tasks to assess the individual’s level of general ability, working memory, speed of processing and phonological knowledge as well as several timed and untimed maths tasks, to assess mathematical knowledge and procedure.

Background information is sought from parents/carers and, with your permission, from the school and an eye test must have occurred within the last 12 months.

The Report will identify areas of strength as well as specific areas of general and mathematical difficulty and will provide detailed recommendations for home and school. 

A covering letter, outlining the key points of the report, can be provided for the SENCo if requested, at no extra cost.

An assessment is not a guarantee of a diagnosis. If this is the case, the report will emphasise the areas of difficulty experienced and detailed recommendations for both home and school

Other Resources

Here are some other useful links:

British Dyslexia Association (covers Dyscalculia)