Special Educational Needs: Dyscalculia

Baroness O'Loan Excerpts

Wednesday 4th June 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness O’Loan (CB)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Bull, for bringing this debate before your Lordships tonight. It is profoundly important. As we have heard, dyscalculia is a profoundly difficult condition that has many different consequences for the child who suffers from it. In many cases, dyscalculia is accompanied by other conditions such as dyslexia and dyspraxia—or DCD, as that is sometimes called.

In these few minutes, I will concentrate for a moment on the impact of some of the less well-known consequences of dyspraxia. Dyspraxia is often described as clumsiness or, more specifically, the inability to manage gross and fine motor movements: the child who cannot carry a cup of tea to his mother without spilling it, who has difficulty riding a bike, who falls regularly, whose handwriting is difficult to decipher and looks very untidy, sometimes with bits of the words missing. The United States National Center for Learning Disabilities says that dyspraxia

“can interfere with virtually all areas of a child’s life: social, academic, athletic, pragmatic. Difficulty with fine motor integration affects a child’s writing, organization on paper, and ability to transition between a worksheet or keyboard and other necessary information which is in a book, on a number line, graph, chart, or computer screen”.

Dyspraxia is caused by neurological difficulties that disrupt the usual pattern of brain activity so that messages from the brain are transmitted in a disordered way, often leading to major difficulties, particularly in the classroom. Children may suffer from audio and visual processing disorders. Children with dyspraxia are often highly intelligent and develop coping strategies but, really, they need help. I will give noble Lords an example. A little child with dyspraxia does not necessarily hear what is said to her in the manner in which the sentence is spoken. If a teacher says four things, the child may hear, “Open your book. Look for the words which are nouns”. Because of the condition, they may be incapable of receiving and restoring the end of the instructions: “Draw a circle round each noun, then look for the adjectives and do the same thing”.

What often happens then is that the child asks the person sitting next to them what the teacher said. That child will tell them—maybe fully, maybe not. Then the child cannot do the work properly, so they have to ask again, or perhaps look at what the other child is doing to make sense of what they are being asked to do. In many cases, such children are described as disruptive, lacking attention and possibly having ADHD. The child knows that they are not capable of doing what is being asked of them and can become very discouraged, affecting their whole educational progress.

A child may be able to read a book, but dyspraxia can affect their ability to read off a whiteboard or a blackboard. The child may be simply unable to understand what is on the board and what they are being asked to do there. For some children, dyspraxia is accompanied by dyscalculia. For others, it is accompanied by dyslexia. For some, it is both. Imagine being a little child sitting in a classroom where what is going on is shrouded in mystery, confusion and incompleteness.

The Dyspraxia Foundation reports that children with dyspraxia are less likely than their peers to achieve five or more grades 9 to 4 at GCSE. The link between qualifications and earning potential is very well known to all of us. Parents seeking help will eventually want to acquire an EHCP—an education, health and care plan, formerly a statement. This is a long, difficult and complicated process. If the child is given an EHCP, it will specify what is required and funding may even, but not always, be provided to the school.

The problem for many parents is accessing the diagnosis of these conditions. A child can wait years to see an educational psychologist, a paediatrician or an occupational therapist. What plans do the Government have for improving access to diagnostic facilities and thereby enhancing the experience of a child with these difficulties, both in and outside school?

Occupational therapy is key to providing help and identifying the impact of the condition on each child. However, a recent survey by the Royal College of Occupational Therapists showed that 86% of therapists reported an increased demand for OT services within the preceding 12 months, and 79% reported that people were presenting with more complex needs because of delayed interventions. This is another regrettable example of our failing and broken healthcare provision. What plans has the Minister to enhance the level of provision? Even getting a private assessment is very expensive: around £900 outside London, maybe £1,000 inside London.

Teachers need additional resources, and very often those resources are not available. Inclusiveteach.com gives a list of ways to improve the learning experience of children with dyspraxia. They include adapting your teaching methods; breaking down tasks into small steps, so that children with dyspraxia can remember and work through them; providing additional time; using assistive technology such as speech-to-text software; encouraging peer support and providing peer buddies to give assistance with tasks, et cetera; and, probably most importantly, promoting self-esteem and emotional well-being, so the child is not frustrated and does not lack confidence because of their difficulties, and celebrating their achievements and helping them understand that everyone has difficulties and challenges in life.

Much work has been done to identify processes which will assist the child to realise their full potential. Often, the adjustments are not very costly, but the recognition of the problem and the identification of its impact on a child is hard to access. Left unassisted, these children may even abandon education; helped, they can achieve much. Increasing provision for helping children is not only an investment in their future but may well enable them to make the contribution to society of which they are capable and which society needs.