Dyscalculia or just bad at maths?

[RobEmily]

I’m wondering if my year 4 daughter (age 8) might have dyscalculia and if so whether I need to get a diagnosis for her / what support that unlocks.

For context, she was diagnosed with dyslexia a few months ago (so kicking myself now for not doing an assessment for both at the same time…) She struggles with retention of things ie phonics so her spelling is atrocious and inconsistent. I’ve tried everything with that and feel we have got nowhere.

For maths, she still counts basic sums using her fingers.

She can’t tell the time at all.

I’m not sure if she has instant recall of number bonds to 10, if she does then she doesn’t easily relay this with higher digits ie 30-26 she wouldn’t know was 4 without writing down and calculating in column method.

If I show her how to do a maths equation and then give her 10 questions she’d get them all right, but if I give her 10 mixed questions using equations she has been previously taught she’d get a fair few wrong either because;

• she misreads the equation symbol
• she doesn’t transfer a number or mixes the digits up ie writes 64 instead of 46
• will forget to add a digit on ie she used column method to work out 48-5 as a long equation and the wrote 3 as the answer as she forgot the 4. This was in a word problem so you’d think she’d see that was nonsense by the quantity of the answer, or am I expecting too much?

we are slowing working through times tables, we have technically done 2, 5, 10, 3, 4 but if we don’t consistently practice all of them every day she forgets them. And division is much harder she can’t do 14/2 without support. She just doesn’t flip the numbers around at all.

She has got “working towards expected” in maths every year, but last year she actually got expected - although she did have a maths tutor all year.

This year she is in several maths intervention classes.

This is all despite hard work on her part. Her report cards are glowing in that regard - her year 3 teacher praised her work ethic and called her a “model pupil” in his report to her dyslexic assessor.

I asked the teacher how she was doing in maths as they’d done an assessment and her mark was low - but the teacher just said this is a year 4 paper so it’s ok for this time in the year.

Should I get her an assessment for dyscalculia or is this possibly just because of the dyslexia / her not being great at maths? If I went for the assessment, what support should I expect / how would it change anything?

I’ve just paid £600 for the dyslexic one and so far I’ve not seen what school is going to do about it other than encourage her to use the Nessy app, which we already do and I think does nothing as it relies on phonics, which at this point I think we can safely say is never going to work!

Sorry if this all sounds very negative… my daughter is amazing at many, many other things and a truly lovely person. But academically I think we’re both a little burnt out…

Honestly, it sounds more like her dyslexia and problems with memory are affecting her ability to do maths with the issues that you describe rather than a separate maths issue.

If you did pay £600 for an assessment and did receive a diagnosis, as a secondary maths teacher it would change basically nothing, support is based on need not diagnosis.

Thanks - I just wasn’t sure if that explains the finger counting and not being able to tell the time?

How do schools determine need without the diagnosis? It feels like dyslexia is not really well understood, identified or managed in schools.

Without the dyslexia diagnosis it was like banging my head against the wall to try and get so much as an email response from SENCO despite her teacher raising a cause for concern - without me having even raised the issue with him.

At least with the diagnosis, I’ve got some intervention and a commitment to more time when she gets to SATs. But they haven’t committed to that in maths, even though that’s where she really needs the extra time.

She is getting maths interventions already so appreciate they have identified a need and are addressing that without the diagnosis, but how do I push for the extra time in maths tests without a diagnosis?

Sadly, given the issues you have noted, extra time in maths exams won’t be much help to her.
It does sound like she has dyscalculia and I would be pushing for the school to have her assessed - you shouldn’t need to be paying for it. The same with a dyslexia assessment. There are screening toolkits that schools can use to determine if the child is ‘at risk’ of having dyslexia or dyscalculia and can then highlight areas of weakness which can be focused on. I’ve linked a very basic screener that you could use to pinpoint areas for discussion with the Senco.
I teach Y4 currently - many of them can’t tell the time and use their fingers when calculating so don’t be too worried that she does this. Some children still need concrete tools to help them!
https://education.gov.scot/media/uehfve1v/nih325-possible-indicators-of-dyscalculia-teacher-checklist.pdf

If you think that a dyscalculia diagnosis would unlock anything - there isn't anything to unlock. I'm a secondary maths teacher of 20 years and I've only taught 2 children with an official diagnosis of dyscalculia. It's not really a 'thing' that is diagnosed although I think that there is a huge industry of people currently gearing up to make it a 'thing' so that they can make money out of diagnosing kids and running training courses.

Most of the research shows that what people might think is 'dyscalculia' is actually either poor foundations in mathematics teaching, or other SEN affecting the ability to learn maths. Your DD has dyslexia which will affect her ability to read and interpret questions. She also has a poor memory which will affect her ability to learn and apply number facts. Another thing which can affect ability to do maths is a poor working memory - children can't hold enough numbers in their head long enough to perform a calculation.

If you talk to experienced maths teachers then they will agree that there are some children with a specific inability to do maths which is not explained by other SEN, where they simply have no concept of number and cannot subitise (look at a group of counters and know how many there are without counting e.g. dots on a dice), but this is extremely rare.

If your DD needs extra time in maths exams then this doesn't need a diagnosis of anything to demonstrate. At GCSE to get extra time she would need to sit some maths exams in normal time and then she would be given 25% extra time, and she would need to gain more marks in the extra time given which would demonstrate that she would be disadvantaged if she did not have the extra time. I don't know how it specifically works for SATs but you could ask the school.

My now 21yo sounds a lot like your DD.
Dyslexia & dyspraxic. Slow processing.
When younger often misread operators / doing the wrong operation
Never got number bonds
Never managed instant recall of times tables.
Poor mental maths
Still can't tell the time consistently.

To give you hope, she has (finally) passed GCSE maths. (If covid and MH issues hadn't got in the way she would have passed earlier. This year was really her first full attempt)

All the mental maths stuff makes life easier, faster etc. But isn't 100% essential.

We concentrated on written methods. She even wrote out a times tables grid in the maths GCSE non calculator to refer to. I'd work on that, as with a grid in front of her she can then do 14/2.

I have dyslexia and dyscalculia. I am not bad at maths. My degree was about 1/3 maths. Just saying!
But I did always use my fingers for calculating and really struggled to remember ‘facts’.

Sadly the response from the teachers on here is typical of the attitude towards dyscalculia in mainstream education in England.

As a maths teacher of 20 years who has worked in both mainstream and special education in England I would say that the general level of knowledge about dyscalculia amongst maths teachers is low to non-existant. Consequently a diagnosis is highly unlikely to result in better support for your DD.

The checklist from the teacher in Ayrshire is a good starting point for identifying specific difficulties which you could then ask your DDs teacher for strategies to assist with (this would be needs based support).

Keep up the practice with timetables, number bonds etc. I'd recommend keeping physical manipulatives (counters etc) available at all times and let your DD decide whether to use them or not - don't encourage/discourage including with facial expressions. She'll abandon them when they're no longer needed, she may also need them "just" for confidence and that's fine too.

Surely a full cognitive assessment would be more useful?

My issue with dyslexia and dyscalculia as diagnoses is that they are just a description - struggles with reading and/or spelling, struggles with maths. There's no information there that can be helpful to a teacher. Whereas knowing that you have a poor working memory or poor phonological processing or poor visual spatial understanding or speech sound difficulties (any of which can delay reading acquisition but which requires very different supports) is much more helpful.

Dyscalculia is the same. That she is poor at maths is much less useful than knowing what underpinning skill is lagging and therefore what teachers can do differently or additionally to support.

Sadly the response from the teachers on here is typical of the attitude towards dyscalculia in mainstream education in England.

Don't be daft. I suspect I know more about children's difficulties with maths than whoever wrote that checklist whose main aim seems to be funnelling half the children in Scotland towards a £600-a-pop dyscalculia assessment. That's not a dyscalculia checklist, that's going to pick up kids who have any number of SEN. Extremely unhelpful. And if you label a kid with poor working memory as dyscalculaic because it causes them to struggle with calculations, then that's not going to help them understand how that poor working memory impacts the rest of their life.

Dyslexia will be affecting things like telling the time on an analog clock. I recommend toe-by-toe for assisting with reading. Keep practicing the maths as well but don’t panic too much. She may not be as academic as you expected but will have other strengths.

Thank you @Soontobe60 that questionnaire is super helpful.

I requested for the school assessments several times and was brushed off. I was going to leave it and keep pushing but her year 3 teacher (who was brilliant and very much in her corner) very tactfully suggested I needed it to push things along internally at the school. The problem is it’s a huge school (four form entry), 1 Senco and a lot more focus on behavioural / social issues.

Thanks good to know re extra time.

I highly doubt poor foundation in teaching - the majority of the class are very good at maths so I imagine there would be poorer overall ability if the foundation teaching was to blame.

We’ve also done a lot of reinforcing at home, so yes maybe it’s the dyslexia / memory issues identified in the assessment that are also impacting maths.

Assume you got assessments - which age and are you glad you had both done? Ie would it help my daughter to have another “label” on top of dyslexia

I’m not completely sure how a full cognitive assessment differs. We had a very long report that covered many cognitive areas in the dyslexia assessment, including numeracy but not fully detailed.

Thanks but wow it’s so depressing hearing all these teachers say a diagnosis won’t result in any support!

We have a 50+ page report with a table of all her strengths and weakness across multiple areas including how she could be helped and you all seem to be saying it means nothing? Or do you mean the diagnosis alone means nothing?

What do you need to do for some meaningful support??

Thank you Oh she does have many talents - she’s an amazing artist, constantly beats me and her dad on non verbal reasoning tests and great at sports.

But she’s in constant tears over homework and school work and feels like less as a result.

I just want to give her some confidence and ensure she doesn’t have doors shut in her face by ticking enough of the academic boxes. But I’m not a teacher, I have no understanding of these difficulties and don’t know how to help.

I didn't say a diagnosis wouldn't result in any support, I said it wouldn't unlock any support. Support isn't based on diagnosis, it's based on need. She is already getting a lot of support with maths in school from the sounds of it.

DD2 was recently assessed at school, and it does appear to be dyscalculia but with lots of caveats, such as, 'DD2 manifests a significant number of traits that could be described as dyscalculia, and shares traits etc...'

I think an official diagnosis can only be made by a qualified Ed Psych?

My best advice is to make sure she gets help with the basics, so adding, subtracting. multiplication, division on a repetitive basis

She might have it, but equally some of this could be dyslexia/retention problems. Unfortunately dyscalculia is probably the least recognised SEN - the school I work at is excellent at picking up SEND and there are kids in every class with dyslexia, ASC, ADHD, Irlens... But I can count on one hand how many times I've seen a dyscalculia diagnosis mentioned.

It wasn't until I became a teacher myself that I even found out about dyscalculia, and suddenly everything about my experiences made sense! Absolutely no knowledge of it in the 90s/00s when I was at school, so I spent my childhood being made to feel like an idiot or lazy when it came to numbers. The positive of that is that I was forced to come up with my own work arounds, which ultimately your daughter will need to do as well. Eg rote learning of times tables, memorising common sums, and yes, counting on fingers! By the time I was in my twenties I had worked out analogue clocks too... If it helps, I got an A at GCSE - the calculator paper made up for the abysmal non-calc!

Thanks she has come up with some amazing work arounds already! But they take a lot longer to do

Yes I think you’re right - that’s why I’m not sure if it is worth it

Ah ok sorry see what you mean. Although we weren’t getting any support for maths or spelling problems before the dyslexia diagnosis. But yes this year maths intervention has kicked in as a result of me bringing it up at the meeting to discuss the dyslexia diagnosis.

Well, was she assessed using the British ability scales or the Weschler Scales of intelligence for Children, colloquially known as the BAS or the WISC? If not, she probably hasn't had a full cognitive assessment. She may have done but for 600 quid I doubt it.

What are your qualifications / experience?

I am an ed psych fwiw

Eta, and as it happens I have very recently sent off a report to a parent who thought their son had dyscalculia, but it turned out to be NVLD which is much wider in scope with maths difficulties as just one symptom. This wider understanding of his difficulties wouldn't have been possible without full cognitive assessment.