Special Educational Needs: Dyscalculia
Baroness Bull
To ask His Majesty’s Government what provision is in place in schools for identifying and supporting students who have special educational needs, particularly dyscalculia.
Baroness Bull (CB)
My Lords, it is a privilege to introduce this debate, the first in either House to focus on dyscalculia, and I look forward to the contributions of all noble Lords on a range of educational needs and disabilities. I am grateful to the Dyscalculia Network, Michela Barbieri, Professors Brian Butterworth and Jo Van Herwegen and Doctors Kinga Morsanyi and Carla Finesilver, on whose work I will draw.
Two years ago, Rishi Sunak announced his “maths to 18” proposal, and my 10 year-old great-niece lost no time in explaining the impact it would have on pupils like her who struggle with maths. Till then, I had never heard of dyscalculia, and I soon discovered I was not alone. Everyone I asked returned the same blank stare. Dyslexia, yes. Dyscalculia? No.
I found no definition of dyscalculia on the DfE website and no guidance for parents and teachers, and no mention in the NHS A to Z of conditions, although dyslexia and dyspraxia are there. Hansard records that while 459 MPs and Peers have raised dyslexia, only 13 have ever mentioned dyscalculia. My biggest surprise was to find that teachers—even maths teachers—do not learn about dyscalculia while training, despite prevalence rates of one in 20 suggesting there is at least one dyscalculic child in every classroom across the UK. With similar rates to dyslexia and impacts as severe, dyscalculia’s low profile is hard to explain.
Dyscalculia is a specific neurodevelopment condition with a biological basis. You are born with it, and it lasts throughout life. Maths learning difficulties exist on a spectrum, but the 2025 SASC guidance says that the defining factor in dyscalculia is
“a pronounced and persistent difficulty with processing numerical magnitude”,
despite adequate intellectual ability and age-appropriate education. Put simply, dyscalculic pupils are more likely than typical learners to struggle to understand place values and the ordering and structure of numbers. This can affect their ability to recognise which of two numbers is greater, even when they are orders of magnitude apart, such as 100 and 10,000.
For most of us, this is hard to imagine; we take for granted that adding two numbers makes a larger one, but for someone with dyscalculia it is as nonsensical as suggesting that adding A to B results in a larger letter. They may also fail to intuit number-pattern links—for example, needing to count the corners of the square to know there are four. As a result, dyscalculics may rely on finger counting and struggle to remember number-based facts or estimate quantities. These challenges spill over into other subjects and everyday tasks such as managing time and money.
Without effective intervention, dyscalculia is likely to impact educational, career and even health outcomes, and it is not a massive leap to surmise that the well-evidenced effects of low numeracy could be even more significant for those with dyscalculia, particularly as they are so rarely diagnosed and supported. Most experts agree that targeted interventions improve outcomes, and the earlier they start, the more effective they will be. Mathematical development is like a staircase—each step depends on the one below.
But early intervention depends on early identification, and formal diagnosis is rare—a dyslexic child is 100 times more likely to be diagnosed. Dyscalculics say diagnosis helps them get the right support, understand their struggles and avoid the shame of being labelled “stupid” or “lazy”, but the £900 cost is often beyond reach. This points to school as the place where dyscalculia might first be identified, underlining the pivotal role of SENCOs and teachers.
The Government’s position is that all teachers are teachers of special educational needs. The new framework for initial teacher training and early careers deliberately does not detail approaches specific to particular additional needs but prioritises high-quality teaching as key to addressing SEND. Schools are required to identify needs and implement personalised support plans that meet the unique needs of individual pupils. In principle, this approach is laudable; in practice, it works only if all teachers and SENCOs can recognise specific learning difficulties and are up to date on interventions for support.
For dyscalculia, this is not the case. A 2023 study found that 43% of teachers were not familiar at all or only slightly familiar with dyscalculia, and both teachers and SENCOs are likely to harbour myths about the condition. A study this year found no relation between knowledge about dyscalculia and years spent teaching, indicating that knowledge is not required through daily work and highlighting the importance of CPD. This is doubly concerning, because while the new framework does contain more content relevant to supporting students with SEN, it implies that learning about specific needs will be covered primarily during school placements, whereas, as we know, knowledge and awareness are likely to be low.
This is not a criticism of schools and educators—rather, of the inherent logical lacuna in government’s approach. In a climate of low awareness, and absent any training on dyscalculia and how it manifests, how can this condition-blind approach to teacher training deliver a learning experience that meets the unique needs of dyscalculic pupils?
I ask the Minister: how will the Government review the effectiveness of the framework in delivering for pupils with specific learning difficulties? Will they consider dyscalculia screening alongside the year 1 phonics check to enable early intervention? Will they review the take-up of the relevant CPD and promote the use of educational resources such as UCL’s ADD UP toolkit?
Throughout the school journey, standard maths teaching and assessment unintentionally disadvantage dyscalculic pupils because of the sheer volume of content and pressure to get to the right answer fast. Research suggests that the best methods to teach dyscalculic pupils have no place in the classroom for typical learners: they take time, focus on fundamentals and often involve revisiting material the wider class covered years earlier. Assigning a teaching assistant to work one-to-one on what the others are learning en masse is unlikely to work. The TA may well not be aware of dyscalculia, and just trying harder is not the answer to a learning difficulty.
But perhaps the biggest barrier to the dyscalculic learner is maths GCSE, which functions as a gatekeeper to A-levels, to all manner of degree courses and even to careers in the Armed Forces. In 2024, 40% of students in England failed maths GCSE and, at resit, 80% failed again. This dispiriting cycle of repeated failure impacts mental health and creates barriers to opportunity that may even breach the Equality Act 2010. The case for reform has been made by the OCR exam board and the Science and Technology Committee of this House. Will the Government listen to growing calls to introduce accessible alternatives to maths qualifications that focus instead on functional skills and real-world numeracy?
In repeatedly highlighting differences with dyslexia, I do not suggest that one condition be prioritised over another but, rather, that research and understanding of dyscalculia lags 30 years behind. Will the Government commit to closing the funding gap between dyslexia and dyscalculia? Will the DfE move to collect differentiated data on specific learning difficulties so that we can see dyscalculia prevalence and co-occurrence? We cannot know what we do not measure.
Over the last two years, I have come to suspect that dyscalculia suffers because of a societal acceptance of poor numeracy that we would not countenance for literacy. We would never accept that a child could not learn to read and write, and yet being bad at maths is seen as normal. Literacy and numeracy are equally important to life chances, but literacy is so often prioritised. Indeed, the new teacher training framework has multiple mentions of literacy and nothing on numeracy. It is deeply ironic how often successive Governments point to the importance of STEM in addressing the challenges of growth, innovation and productivity, while failing to grasp the UK’s stubborn problem with low numeracy, which affects over half the adult population.
It is against this backdrop that dyscalculic children must try to have their needs identified, understood and met. Some have the great fortune of supportive parents or a teacher who gets it, but others do not. Even where there is support, we should not underestimate the isolation, stress and anxiety of learning with dyscalculia. I do not doubt the intentions of the Government or the commitment of schools and teachers, but unless steps are taken to increase the awareness and under- standing of dyscalculia among policymakers, educators and the wider community, dyscalculic learners will continue to have the odds stacked against them.
Some 17 years ago, the Government Office for Science recommended that, because of its low profile and high impacts, dyscalculia should be raised as a government priority. The Government then, and Governments since, have all failed to act. I ask the Minister: will this Government be the one that make the difference?
Baroness Thornton (Lab)
My Lords, I am very pleased to take part in today’s debate for two reasons, the first of which is personal. After 27 years in your Lordships’ House, I had not anticipated that I would talk about this. I failed my maths O-level four times and still managed to get good enough A-levels, including one in economics, to be accepted at the London School of Economics and Political Science. On reflection, I seem not to have had problems with concepts, but I did have problems with numbers. Nevertheless, the lack of a maths O-level means that, today, I would not even be allowed to take my A-levels, let alone be admitted to the London School of Economics.
When I was a Government Minister, I occasionally told my officials that any important numbers that I had to speak aloud needed to be put in words as well as in numbers, as I had a tendency then—and still do now—to reverse them. Telephone numbers are a particular issue. A close member of my family has long been diagnosed with dyscalculia as well as dyspraxia, with the two often going together. They had a maths tutor from the age of 11, whose job it was to get them through their maths GCSE—with success. But that of course is not open to most families.
Secondly, the article by the noble Baroness, Lady Bull, in the House magazine in March absolutely hit the spot. My friend, Emeritus Professor Brian Butterworth, is one of the founding fathers of the modern approach to mathematical cognition. His expertise in this area and that of his colleagues mean that we are all very well briefed indeed.
This is a timely debate and one that I hope will push the policy agenda forward. The priority here, as the noble Baroness, Lady Bull, has explained, is to seek recognition for those who struggle with maths in the same way in which we recognise the importance of support for children who have speech and language delay and for those who are dyslexic. This recognition needs to be built into our SEND programmes. I need reassurance from the Minister over the Neurodivergence Task and Finish Group, established by her department to provide advice and recommendations on how best to meet the needs of neurodivergent children and young people within mainstream education settings, which seemed at the outset not to include children with speech and language development challenges and, most relevant to this debate, children with developmental dyscalculia. Can my noble friend assure the House that this issue has been remedied?
The noble Baroness, Lady Bull, has explained eloquently what dyscalculia is, and surely the fact that this affects the numeracy skills of between 4% and 7% of children, thereby reducing the probability of them achieving five or more good GCSEs. That significantly reduces education and life chances, which highlights the inequality faced by this cohort of children, young people and adults. It is important and requires the Government to do several things. Fortunately, much of the research and work has already been undertaken. For example, in 2020, the paper Current Understanding, Support Systems, and Technology-led Interventions for Specific Learning Difficulties drew together for the Government’s Office of Science at the time a series of four rapid evidence reviews to help inform a project carried out by the then Prime Minister’s Council for Science and Technology. The paper explored how technology and research can help improve educational outcomes for learners with specific learning difficulties, including dyscalculia. The proposal for action in this paper and many other documents provides a good pathway for dealing with this challenge.
Does my noble friend the Minister recognise the need to give developmental dyscalculia legal status as well as an official definition in the UK? Will the Government be developing the policy framework from which action can flow—such as teacher training, special needs assessments and advice for parents, to name just one or two? Is any consideration being given to this issue in the SEND review taking place at the moment and as described by the noble Baroness, Lady Bull? Raising awareness of this condition, as Dyscalculia Day will do, is the first step towards creating an environment in which all children are given the support they need and deserve to fulfil their potential and live the life they want to lead.
Lord Hampton (CB)
My Lords, it is always a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton. Like everyone here, I thank my noble friend Lady Bull for her strenuous efforts to get this important topic debated and her thought-provoking opening speech.
As ever, I must declare an interest in that I still teach weekly at a state secondary school in Hackney. I am actually a teacher of maths—15% of the design and technology curriculum is maths based—and I have to admit that I did not know much about dyscalculia before researching for this. An irony here is that dyslexia is difficult to spell and dyscalculia is tricky to say. What is it about these learning disabilities that we have to give them such complicated names? I am told it rhymes with Julia, so I have to keep on remembering that.
At school, I talked to the head of SEND and was told that we assess for dyslexia but not dyscalculia. If there are concerns about dyscalculia, which are rarely reported and usually flagged by parents, as opposed to teachers, we usually advise that they self-refer through their GP. In maths, students are placed into sets according to their year 6 CAT scores, and additional support is then given according to need.
But there we have a problem: according to the recent letter from the House of Lords Science and Technology Committee to the Secretary of State for Education, the Government are
“failing to recruit as many maths teachers as it has targeted for over a decade, and almost half of all secondary schools needing to use non-specialist teachers for maths. It is part of a wider shortage in STEM graduates going into teaching (and being retained in the profession)”.
Once you have non-specialist teachers teaching maths, there is inevitably going to be a drop in levels of help for those who struggle most in maths.
The Dyscalculia Network puts it more starkly:
“In recent published data around Prison education 55% of prisoners who lack a maths qualification had a Learning Difficulty confirmed at their initial screening. Once identified, these people often went on to obtain maths qualifications, ranging from Entry Level through to Level 2. They experienced success. The issue is not in Prison education; the problem sits in lack of recognition of maths learning difficulties in previous educational settings”.
I return to the House of Lords Science and Technology Committee:
“Our witnesses argued that the rigid focus on obtaining a Grade 4 at GCSE in the current educational system disadvantages many students. There is an argument for the creation of a widely recognised, criterion-based, functional mathematics qualification in the UK that allows school leavers and adult learners alike to demonstrate the numeracy skills needed for life. This could be set up by dividing the GCSE curriculum into functional mathematics, with a practical focus on applying the basics, and more the abstract, pure mathematics required for further study, or through expanding and formalising existing criterion-based numeracy qualifications”.
This is actually what I teach in design technology, both at GCSE and A-level. All the maths problems are based on real-world product design issues: the amount of varnish needed to coat a table, the tessellations of a product to save material or the amount of sheet metal that you would have to order for a production run. This means that even those students who find maths boring or difficult can see how the maths will help them in their design—how different from a student who finds maths difficult or even impossible facing a double GCSE maths lesson on a Monday morning.
The maths curriculum needs to change, I have long argued that children should be taught how to build and populate a calculating spreadsheet in year 6. They would love it and see the point to it, rather than fearing Excel, as most adults do.
The Dyscalculia Network goes on to say:
“All citizens need foundational mathematics skills and general quantitative literacy for daily life, including personal finance and general employment. We need mathematics curricula that set people up for life and tools to support those that struggle”.
By insisting on a rigid maths curriculum, we are failing not only those with dyscalculia and many different types of neurodiversity, but anyone who thinks vaguely differently from the norm.
Baroness Coffey (Con)
My Lords, when I saw a debate about special educational needs and dyscalculia, I thought, “Wow, what a wonderful combination here”. The noble Baroness, Lady Bull, who introduced the debate today was kind enough to recognise the desires of my right honourable friend Rishi Sunak when he introduced the Multiply scheme. Unfortunately, the funding has ended for that. It was a genuine attempt to recognise that numeracy is not all about getting A-levels in maths and was really important to help people prosper in this country in their own lives and in aspects of productivity that have been referred to.
I have not heard of this before, but it has long been recognised that people, to some extent, reach a certain level in their capabilities on maths. As has already been eloquently said, we do not just assume that because people do not grasp instincts straightaway you do not try to help in that regard, such as how you work out whether something is a square or not.
It has to be said that sometimes it feels that in parts of our education, looking for differentiation by child, quite rightly, trying to recognise that there are seven different ways of learning can be quite a struggle when putting together a lesson plan, but it is important that teachers do that. I value not only what happened in my childhood but what I see in schools in different parts of the country.
It is good to see the noble Baroness, Lady Blake, in her place. Having been a council leader, she had not only the statutory duty for children but considerable knowledge of how to be practical in how we help children reach their full potential and recognise some of the challenges of special educational needs being mainstreamed, but also how wonderfully it can be addressed. I am delighted also to see my noble friend Lady Barran, because she and I discussed a particular matter which I will be raising regarding the future of a special needs school in Suffolk.
Going back to these challenges about numeracy, I was also struck by what the noble Lord, Lord Hampton, said about non-specialist teachers, in effect, and teaching CDT, I think he said. I must admit that I found numbers very easy when I was a child, but when I got to A-level it started getting a bit complicated. It was only when I went to university and I had an engineer as a tutor that I actually got the whole concept of mechanics. I wish I had had that, in a way, rather than the specialist maths teacher, with whom, however they tried in my sixth form, I just could not quite grab the concept on some of the points. There is an element to what he suggests—using practical solutions or examples is a good way to engage people who do not necessarily follow the traditional way of learning.
I was also struck by what the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, said about, I think, her fourth attempt to pass her O-level—I assume it would be, although I do not wish to be ungracious to her. I think there is something here about what we do in setting qualifications. One of the challenges when I was at the DWP—we went through this in quite a lot of detail with employers when we were trying to get people back into work, particularly after Covid—is that when we were engaging with employers, routine job descriptions would normally include two things. Everybody had to have a driving licence, and everybody had to have GCSE English and maths. Quite regularly, we would say, “Why? That job does not need you to drive, and you may need to be numerate and do other things, but does it really require you to have a specific qualification?” The noble Lord, Lord Hampton, referred to qualifications. I think there has been developed a practical qualification that is equivalent to a GCSE, and that is a good thing and something we should continue to stress.
I am conscious that there has been a significant increase in awareness of children with special educational needs, and we have been through a variety of phases of what has happened about so-called mainstream schools—they are just schools, as far as I am concerned, for a neighbourhood; ideally, equipped to teach every child in that community—and how we try to accommodate those children who do not fit the norms, as has already been adequately said.
The vast majority of people in this country really struggle with anything to do with maths beyond the basic GCSE. That is why we should be reconsidering how we continue to support the strengthening of teaching that is available—particularly, I would say, in primary school, not just in secondary school—thinking about how we build those foundations and why I hope that the Government will reconsider aspects of something like the Multiply programme in recognising the opportunities that will bring for prosperity for all.
I turn finally to the situation in Suffolk. I respect that the current Government have to assess programmes, but in the town where I live, a school that had acquired a specialist interest in special educational needs was also a free school, and it ended up that it just was not viable in quite the way that it had been. My noble friend Lady Barran agreed, after careful consideration working with officials, that a particular site—the site of Saxmundham Free School—should become a special educational needs school for provision for the east of Suffolk. There is another one in Felixstowe run by the same trust.
It is my huge disappointment that, although that school closed in the summer of last year, there was quite a lot of deliberation about whether a new school needed to be built on a site that was there. The clear intention was that there would be a school ready to open this coming September. I am sad to say that there is no such school. I posed a Written Question to the Department for Education on this and it is still saying, “We’re still considering this”. There are a lot of children who desperately need some specialist support, as well as children in neighbourhood schools. I would really encourage the Minister to take back from this debate my real concern about the children in east Suffolk; I hope that that Saxmundham school site can be opened as quickly as possible to provide special educational support for those children who desperately need it.
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.
Lord Mott (Con)
My Lords, I would like to take this opportunity to thank the noble Baroness, Lady Bull, for securing this important debate but, more importantly, for making me aware of the many challenges that thousands of schoolchildren suffer from every single day.
I am taking part in this debate not only as a parent but as someone who has dyslexia. I was pondering whether I should make a confession after the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, made hers a little earlier. I only managed to take my GCSE maths exam three times. I never quite managed to get to the fourth occasion—but, who knows, in later life I might decide to take GCSE maths for a fourth time.
The challenges that I faced in my early days at school, when I spent time in what was described then as a special class, were a bewildering and confusing experience. I am very pleased to say that, since then, special educational needs provision has changed for the better. The experience I faced growing up helped me understand my eldest daughter’s journey, as she is dyslexic. I was able to see the early signs—the confusion, frustration and the quiet resilience needed to thrive in an education system that was not built with her in mind—and help to support her.
But I have also seen what happens when support is in place. Her confidence grew, her ability shone through and the label of difficulty became a gateway to understanding. Much of the support came from her parents, who are often forgotten in the journey but are, in my view, fundamental. That journey taught me something deeply personal: if it is recognised and supported, difference does not need to mean disadvantage.
Today I want to turn to a specific learning difficulty that affects the ability to understand numbers and carry out basic arithmetic. It is often described as the mathematical equivalent of dyslexia, yet in terms of awareness and support, it lags far behind, as we have heard this evening, and that is what I want to focus on. I can say to the Minister that I will not be asking for huge amounts of extra money, but I have one or two suggestions that may start to make a difference to children, families and our communities.
Up to 6% of the population may be affected by this learning difficulty—roughly one child in every classroom—but it remains underidentified, misunderstood and rarely provided for. Although the SEND code of practice recognises it, in practice many teachers are not trained to spot it, as we have already heard. We must ensure that initial teacher training and ongoing professional development include strategies for recognising and supporting children.
The awareness now common with dyslexia must be extended to mathematical learning difficulties. Parents often face lengthy delays accessing assessments, or they are told that their child’s struggles are not severe enough to qualify. In some areas, no assessment is available at all. That is totally unacceptable.
I recently had the pleasure of meeting a company based in west London, delivering its EHCP tool to local authorities in the SEND and education space. The tool brings together insights from professional reports, analyses them using AI and drafts personalised high-quality EHC plans, cutting down the time spent on manual writing and giving SEND teams more capacity to focus on children and families. Educational technology can play a key role. Tools now exist to help detect related problems and tailor learning to each child. These platforms can flag up issues early before a child reaches crisis point, and offer multi-sensory, scaffolded approaches proven to help. But schools need access to these tools and training to use them effectively.
Sadly, many parents are left to navigate the system alone, with inconsistent advice and little clarity. We need better signposting, clearer communication from schools and consistent local support. Parents must be seen as partners, not obstacles, in the process of identifying and meeting children’s needs. In supporting parents with more information, I believe that we can start to make a real difference. It was my own experience that helped me support my daughter, but many others were able to understand. Awareness takes the pressure away from our schools and our teachers. They must play a key role, but I want parents and grandparents to understand how they can not only provide support but understand the signs and start the early intervention that is required at home.
Awareness is the foundation of change. Without it, this problem remains invisible to educators, policymakers and, too often, the children themselves. A survey in 2023 of UK teachers highlights the problem, with over 40% not being familiar or slightly familiar with it. Let us compare that with dyslexia, where just 15% were in the same position. This is not a surprise, as awareness around dyslexia is strong. I am looking forward to attending an event tomorrow evening that Channel 4 is hosting to hear more about Jamie Oliver’s struggle with dyslexia. I also look forward to the noble Baroness, Lady Bull, perhaps hosting an event next year with Channel 4, to which we could invite Bill Gates, Robbie Williams or perhaps even Cher.
I urge the Government to support a national awareness campaign, in partnership with educational charities and neurodiverse advocates. This could include training for all school staff, public information materials and visibility at leadership level. Let us give teachers the tools, parents the clarity and young people the confidence they deserve. With understanding comes opportunity—let us offer both, to every child in every classroom.
Baroness Hunt of Bethnal Green (CB)
My Lords, I join others in thanking the noble Baroness, Lady Bull, for securing this debate and for her relentless efforts to raise awareness and understanding of this most overlooked of subjects. I share some of the difficulties in pronouncing it, but I will do my best: dyscalculia. I refer to my register of interests and declare that my King’s College intern, PhD student George Kinkead, a maths teacher for over a decade, has told me about his experiences and what might help. I reflect his views in this contribution.
When considering this debate, I was shocked to discover that despite dyscalculia being as common as dyslexia, dyslexia is 100 times more likely to be diagnosed. I am dyslexic and I was lucky—I went into a small room with a lovely woman who tried to teach me to juggle. We did things differently in Wales. I remember the matter-of-fact way it was established that my reading up and down a page rather than across, my difficulty following a sequence of instructions, and my ongoing need to hold my left hand up in an L-shape to establish which was the left side, simply indicated that I worked in a particular way.
My love of stories broadened my vocabulary, so the apparent problem I have with simple word recognition was alleviated. Old English posed some challenges in my first year as an undergraduate, but I suspect they were exacerbated by the access to a subsidised bar that came into my life at the same time.
My point is that a diagnosis of dyslexia was helpful. It helped me, my teachers and my parents alter our approach to my learning, and it meant I did not lose my confidence when I took a different route to get to the same place as my peers. I suspect that the lack of stigma around dyslexia that perhaps existed for my generation has led to some of the creative solutions we have seen to it. My computer is well equipped with different packages that enable me to type and read in a different way. I have had acetates to lay over things since I was quite young. The same innovation has not happened around dyscalculia.
It is clear from what we have heard so far in this debate that the woefully inadequate diagnosis of dyscalculia is exacerbating the lifelong exclusion that children can experience if their challenges are simply dismissed as ineptitude. My clever PhD student, George, explained to me that, as the noble Baroness, Lady Bull, said, maths is hierarchical. Unlike other subjects, each topic builds on foundational skills. Missing even a short period of instruction can prevent future learning. If one finds long division in primary school utterly baffling, the quadratic equations that come in year 8 will be a complete mystery: failure builds on failure. A simple diagnosis and a shift in approach as a result can help children. Instead, as we have heard, children feel incapable, tell themselves that they are useless and are ruled out of careers because of it.
The pressure on teachers is immense and requests for additional training seem never-ending. But it seems that even a most cursory introduction to dyscalculia would be of benefit to pupils and teachers, support early diagnosis, and help to restore confidence to those pupils who are ruling themselves out at a young age. In 10 years as a maths teacher, George has never received any statutory training on dyscalculia.
It is also clear that the transition from primary school to secondary school creates another risk for pupils. Research conducted by Glencross and Wallen in their 2020 study on transitions from primary school to secondary school found that informal personal knowledge about individual learning support is often lost, which can be especially challenging for students with neurodiverse conditions.
I wonder whether an opportunity is presented by the proposed introduction of the single unique identifier in the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill. The Government are rightly taking care to think about what data about children should be saved and shared, and it is perhaps possible that sharing information about neurodiversity, including dyscalculia, can help schools support children to keep working through those mathematical hierarchies even if they change schools.
I hope that the noble Baroness, Lady Bull, achieves her aim of ensuring that dyscalculia becomes a government priority. It has historically been a low-profile issue that is perhaps now slightly higher profile as a result of her efforts and this debate. But it is clear that some simple arrangements can make a significant difference to young people in this country.
Lord Shinkwin (Con)
My Lords, I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Bull, on securing this debate. I also thank her for educating us. I have to confess that I had never heard of dyscalculia before preparing for tonight’s debate. If the excellent briefings produced by our Library and the Dyscalculia Network are anything to go by, I am in good company.
I relate to the issue on two levels, both personal. First, as a disabled pupil today, I would probably be assessed for SEN support. As a child in the 1970s and 1980s, such provision was not available, at least not to my knowledge. What was not so much available as expected was that all disabled children should be sent to special schools and segregated. I mean no criticism of special schools, but I will always remember my mother, who spent a lifetime in teaching, being horrified when the headmaster of one special school boasted that, the year before, a pupil had achieved one CSE.
My limited time at that special school, when I had to use a wheelchair full-time following yet another fracture, made an indelible impression on me. Even as a 10 year-old, I was aware of the low expectations. It was just assumed that disability was synonymous with underachievement. Indeed, the title of the noble Baroness’s article on PoliticsHome of March this year,
“Dyscalculic children have been let down for too long”,
could so easily have been applied to children with disabilities generally. They were let down by the system. Helping children with SEN realise their potential simply did not come into the equation.
I like to think that the damaging culture of low aspiration which informed such attitudes then is being challenged by teachers and SEN co-ordinators now. I want to put on record my recognition that they do incredibly important work, and I take this opportunity to thank them for responding to what, at the end of the day—and I know from my parents that a day in the classroom is often long and always demanding—has to be a vocation. Ultimately, a good teacher answers a vocation to help shape a child’s future and instil in them a belief that they can make a worthwhile contribution to life, especially beyond school.
Secondly, I relate to the issue as someone who got an A in Latin O-level and a C—just—in maths. Indeed, my maths teacher had so much confidence in my innate ability with figures that he decided he would enter me for both O-level and CSE. I scraped a pass in both, but he obviously was not taking any chances. As with the noble Baroness’s nieces, my heart sank when a previous Prime Minister made great play of his plan for all children to be required to study maths beyond GCSE. My own experience—and, I believe, the experience of other noble Lords who have spoken in tonight’s debate—is that, however much we would wish otherwise, our brains are wired differently. Maths is simply not for everyone.
That would appear to be especially the case for children with dyscalculia. As someone who really struggled with anything numerical at school and knows what it is like to have one’s confidence undermined, both because of the unkind taunts that go with the territory of living with a disability and, specifically, because of finding maths so challenging, I hate to think of how much the one in 20 children with dyscalculia must suffer, and, worse, how much their suffering is compounded unnecessarily by ignorance.
Of course, teachers and SENCOs are not to blame if they are not aware of dyscalculia, but surely that only underlines the strong case that noble Baroness, Lady Bull, has made for improved support, particularly the call for mandatory training in dyscalculia for teachers. Does the Minister agree that these children need to be taught that dyscalculia is not their fault and that they have potential worth realising? It seems to me—and, I suspect, to other contributors in tonight’s debate—that their life chances depend on it.
Lord Tarassenko (CB)
My Lords, I too congratulate my noble friend Lady Bull on securing this debate and making such a strong case for action in just under 10 minutes.
On Monday, we released the final report of the Maths Horizons Project, which I have had the privilege of chairing for the past eight months. This project has taken an in-depth look at the maths curriculum and assessment, with a view to informing the Government’s review chaired by Professor Becky Francis.
The abilities of children in our schools for any characteristic follow a Gaussian distribution, probably better known as a bell curve. In the Maths Horizons Project our aim has been to try to identify strategies that would help not only those in the top two deciles for mathematical ability but those in the bottom two deciles—the bottom 20%—who would have failed to get a grade 4 in maths GCSE even after multiple resits.
Our second recommendation—out of seven—we believe will help both groups. It is:
“Rebalance content from upper primary to lower secondary, allowing more time for knowledge to be secured when it is first introduced”.
Giving more time to teachers to focus on core concepts in early primary school would provide children the opportunity to develop and embed the foundations they need.
The better balance of content between upper primary and lower secondary will also enable high attainers not to become bored and lose interest in maths during key stage 3, as often happens today, when much of the current teaching focuses on revisiting key stage 2 content. The main benefit, however, will be for those children who struggle with mathematics for more general cognitive reasons. Although it is unlikely to be sufficient for children with severe number-processing difficulties—and I have waited that long to introduce dyscalculia—we identified this group as a special group in our Maths Horizons Project.
Three numbers have kept coming up in this debate. With a prevalence of about 5%—the first number—it is likely that there is at least one child with dyscalculia in every class of 30, the second number. Although the prevalence of dyscalculia is similar to that of dyslexia, a child with dyscalculia is 100 times—that is the third number and probably the most shocking—less likely to be diagnosed. But it is encouraging to be able to report some recent progress here. A member of the executive group for the Maths Horizons Project, Professor Camilla Gilmore from Loughborough University, has been part of a working group developing an up-to-date evidence-based dyscalculia diagnosis methodology. This was released in March this year by the SpLD Assessment Standards Committee.
This enables a solution to the issue of diagnosis but does not deliver it as there is a lack of suitable training for dyscalculia assessors. Most current SpLD assessment training courses leading to an approved qualification focus on literacy skills and the identification of dyslexia, with very limited content on mathematics, so I urge the Minister to intervene to ensure that approved qualifications also include the identification of dyscalculia.
Another recommendation of the Maths Horizons Project would increase the likelihood of diagnosis. Our fourth recommendation is to introduce
“low-stakes gateway checks of fundamental knowledge, to be administered nationally at specified points in new knowledge-progression maps”.
A low-stakes gateway check at key stage 1 would allow teachers to identify at an early stage those children who are struggling to grasp foundational concepts in mathematics, meaning that a diagnosis of dyscalculia could be made between the ages of five and seven. Of course, we should acknowledge—as has been pointed out—that problems will persist, even with high-quality specialist intervention following a diagnosis.
When a child with dyscalculia reaches secondary school, the interventional strategies could include apps that run either on a smartphone or a computer tablet, such as an iPad. Earlier, it was my pleasure to meet some people with dyscalculia here in the cafeteria, and some of the young ones told me that they do use apps to help with their dyscalculia. The Maths Horizons Project team was broadly in favour of digital tools for education, provided that these are introduced in the classroom in the right way, at the right time and in a carefully sequenced progression.
If you look on the web, you will see there are plenty of apps to help children with dyscalculia that can be downloaded from the Apple App Store or the Google Play Store, but only those that are high quality and evidence-based should be used. A simple measure that the Department for Education could take would be to establish a working group to make recommendations that will help parents and teachers identify suitable apps.
As we have heard, we have made huge progress over the last 20 years in diagnosing and supporting children with dyslexia. For a child with dyscalculia to thrive, early identification is also likely to be crucial. Low-stakes gateway checks at key stage 1 would help to spot those in need of an up-to-date assessment. This would require one or two teachers per school to be sent on training courses to gain an approved qualification that focuses on dyscalculia. Simple, low-cost intervention strategies with counters can help children at primary level who have had a diagnosis, before they are supplemented or replaced by evidence-based digital tools at secondary level. It is now time for children with dyscalculia to be given the same opportunities to progress through our education system as children with dyslexia.
Lord Addington (LD)
My Lords, first, I declare my interests: I am dyslexic, I am president of the British Dyslexia Association and I am chairman of a company that deals with assistive technology. Having done that, I welcome two more Members to the “mafia of misspelling”. We would take over the world, but one of us would jot down the name of where we had the first conspiracy wrong and the other one would misread it—so you are comparatively safe for a bit.
When she started this debate, the noble Baroness, Lady Bull, put her finger absolutely on why this is important: the gateway subjects to progress in this country are GCSE maths and English, and this has driven much of our recent education policy. If we ignore that reality, we are not going to get anywhere. The noble Lord, Lord Hampton, mentioned that we are now moving back towards more practical-based, relevant knowledge-based subjects. Everything he said about maths being a practical subject has been said to me about English. It may have been a great original thought, but I am afraid he has friends out there.
I thought that I was the going to be first person to speak about technology and apps, but no, somebody has beaten me to it. I am not sure whether this is irritating or reassuring, but there is a degree of consensus here. We have to work around this problem. If we still take these two subjects as roadblocks, we are going to have problems. It is also fair to say that, in our society, it has been more acceptable to be bad at maths than bad at English.
Those are the two gateway subjects, but you used to be able to get around it and say that it was fine and did not matter. Good old sexism also kicked in: we do not spot girls with special educational needs as easily because they tend to handle the classroom better and do not kick off as much. All these are reasonably accepted factors. However, to deal with this, if we accept that we need education to happen, we have to start taking the maths side more seriously. The first thing the Government could do is to say that dyscalculia is the appropriate word or come up with another one, because it is not recognised at the moment. That is a small change, but if the Minister could address that in her answer, it would be very helpful. I would like a reason why it has not happened yet, because it is just a word.
If noble Lords think that this does not matter, let me take them to a conference. It is a dyslexia conference but, hey, the BDA does cover dyscalculia on its website and does work on it, so we are not all bad; it is not often that I say that we have come across as the big bad bully who gets all the attention. Had noble Lords been with me at this conference, we would have got to the great bane of the modern education system—the lawyers, making presentations about how you get your education, health and care plan. This was at the start of the process, because we needed them to fight through. This lawyer said, “Oh no, you don’t need that, because dyscalculia is a special educational maths problem”, and he went on for about half an hour. Of course, everybody is going to learn that, are they not? One word really would help. If it is not dyscalculia—I thought I had problems with pronunciation, but it would appear that I have cracked this one and others have not—could we come up with another one or a better definition?
Knowing and having a reference point will help, because you will know what to refer back to. Saying that it is “dyslexia with numbers” does not help. As it was explained to me, it is about finding the actual concept of mathematics very difficult—the difference between one and many and everything in between, or having problems with counting backwards. You cannot do it, and you have to start again; you just do not get the concept.
Although the Government have made this wonderful statement that every teacher is a teacher of special educational needs, if they do not know what they are doing then I would wish that they were not. Sticking with English and maths, they will have already failed in these two basic subjects. If you have already failed in a classroom and the help is more of the same, you will get more failure. We must remember that we need specific help for this; we cannot use the same apps or the same teaching techniques. We must address that. If we are to have this wonderful change, with everybody teaching special educational needs, where is the training? Where is the focus? Where is the training to do no harm—to borrow from medicine? Let us not compound failure. I thought I might make a joke about it taking me only three attempts to pass maths, and mine was only a CSE, but let us forget about that.
We have to think about how to address this problem properly. It is not about having more of the same, and it is not “Try harder”—I am very glad that nobody here has said that. As the noble Lord, Lord Shinkwin, put it, it is about expectation. We need to make sure to move the barrier to allow somebody to have realistic expectation. I have not said anything about dyspraxia; we will save that for another day. Making sure that the teachers know what they are doing is the first step.
Baroness Barran (Con)
My Lords, it is a pleasure to speak in this debate, so ably introduced by the noble Baroness, Lady Bull. She rightly brings the House’s attention to the important issues of SEND in general and dyscalculia in particular. Maths is of course a vital area for securing economic growth, and I would like to pay tribute to the work done by the Maths Horizons Project, chaired by the noble Lord, Lord Tarassenko, on maths education in the age of AI.
Nationally we have seen great progress in recent years in our international rankings for maths, being a top country outside south-east Asia, and with a marked improvement in the last 30 years in the standard pass rate for maths at GCSE to around 80% by the age of 19. But when we turn to the wider issues facing children with special educational needs and disabilities, the situation is much less rosy.
The system we have created to respond to children with SEND is a product of the Children and Families Act 2014. Before the 2014 reforms the SEND system was widely criticised for being fragmented: education, health and social care operated separately in different silos. It was described as bureaucratic and slow, parents suffered lengthy delays, and it was very complicated to get any support. Families felt disempowered and unable to input into decisions that affected their children. As my noble friend Lord Shinkwin said, the system was low in ambition; there was a culture of low expectations.
As we know, the Act introduced education, health and care plans, support to the age of 25, the concept of co-production with families, and the requirement for local authorities to publish comprehensive information about available SEND services. I labour these points for two reasons. The first is that across this House we all know that the system we have today is not working well, but it is a function of these reforms. They look so sensible on paper, yet in practice they have created a set of incentives that ended up pointing in the wrong direction.
I dwell on this also because the Government are currently taking action. We are debating, in the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill, major reforms to safeguarding systems, and I know they are planning to bring forward further reforms in relation to special educational needs. I think that will be later this year; maybe the Minister can confirm the timing.
Whether in relation to the broader reforms or to specific interventions for dyscalculia, it is important that we test and pilot and really are confident, and that we focus on implementation. The importance of that cannot be overstated. The noble Baroness, Lady Bull, has rightly focused this debate on the resources in schools to identify special educational needs and to support students with a range of needs. She mentioned some of the changes made under the previous Government to the early career framework and the support for early-career teachers. Those were bolstered by an investment in early years SENCOs and a revised practical SENCO qualification.
Some of the problems that we still face go beyond those reforms. I will touch briefly on two areas in particular. First, most of the discretionary funding in the system is available for children with an education, health and care plan, and there is no real incentive for successful early intervention to support children with special educational needs and integrate them into mainstream education without an EHCP. Because of the shortage of places in specialist schools, which my noble friend Lady Coffey mentioned, we need to be able to integrate more effectively and incentivise schools to deliver effective early intervention.
Secondly, there is no equivalent of the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence for SEND. I am told repeatedly by school leaders that some of the support suggested for children, including those with dyscalculia, has literally no evidence base to support it—but if it is on the plan they have no choice but to deliver it. All too often we see the least qualified members of staff in a school being allocated to a child with complex needs, when actually that child needs much more specialist support. I would grateful if the Minister could comment on whether that is on the shopping list of things that the Government might consider in their reforms.
In closing, I echo some of the questions that have already been put by other noble Lords. Will the Government consider a formal definition of dyscalculia? Will they respond to the call by the noble Baroness, Lady Bull, to track the incidence of cases and indeed the impact of interventions to support those children? As my noble friend Lord Shinkwin said, this is all about securing opportunity for children—something that, across the House, we can all support.
Baroness in Waiting/Government Whip (Baroness Blake of Leeds) (Lab)
My Lords, I begin, of course, by expressing my gratitude to the noble Baroness, Lady Bull, for opening this important debate on supporting children with special educational needs and disabilities generally and particularly those with dyscalculia. I know she is a champion in this space, and for all those who struggle with maths, and obviously has personal experience. She has raised this on several occasions, and we all thank her for that, and I know that she is not going to give up either. She has identified herself as a real champion and I am sure there are many people who are grateful to her for that.
I thank all noble Lords who have contributed to the debate. I will not be able to respond to everything in the short time I have, but I value the richness and, in particular, the honesty from lived experiences, which make these debates so real and so important. We are talking particularly about children, about their progression into being young people, into the world of work, into adulthood, and we should always keep that at the absolute centre of everything we do.
Just referencing a couple of very quick points, I think that the insights of the noble Baroness, Lady O’Loan, on self-esteem were critical, as was the personal testimony of the noble Lord, Lord Mott—I think he has set something in motion, with a potential event in the future. The noble Baroness, Lady Hunt, spoke about juggling; I am going to keep that in my mind’s eye going forward, although it certainly would not have worked for me, I have to be honest.
I thank the noble Lord, Lord Shinkwin, so much for his honesty about his experience with maths. Maths can be tough in many different ways and there is that whole issue of making sure that we instil confidence and make young people realise that so many things are not their fault. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Addington, as always: we await with interest to hear about additions to his mafia.
I want to be clear from the start that this whole area around SEND is an absolute top priority for this Government, and I hope that the announcements that the Government have been making have made that clear. I appreciate the honesty from the noble Baroness, Lady Barran. I think we can all see that the SEND system is on its knees, and we have to be honest about that. Children’s needs are not being met. Parents are forced into a position of fighting for support. As a local authority leader, I know that only too well, as well as all the issues around funding that go with it.
We have put at the centre of our plan for change making sure that we restore the trust of parents and making sure that schools in particular have the tools to identify and support children before things get to a crisis point. We want to commit to ensuring excellence for everyone in every area that we cover, and nowhere could be more important than that. I hope that that is appreciated and that it is reflected in the extra funding that we have been able to put in thus far, both on the teaching side and on the capital side, which of course is incredibly important.
Our ambition reflects the many reports that have highlighted the challenges facing the SEND system. It is difficult for parents, carers and young people to navigate, and outcomes for children can be very poor. I am pleased that the Education Select Committee is undertaking its own inquiry, which is underscoring the significant challenges we face.
I repeat that it is a priority for the Government that all children receive the right support to succeed in their education and lead happy, healthy and productive lives. I reassure the noble Baroness, Lady Coffey, that special schools will always have a place in this system. I cannot go into detail about specific sites, but there will be many, and they are all of course being looked at and worked out in terms of priorities.
We know that it takes the whole school workforce to help children and young people thrive in education. I mean the whole range, from teachers and teaching assistants to support staff, special educational needs co-ordinators, early years educators, and as we have heard from the contributions, allied health professionals. We are investing to improve outcomes and experiences right across the country. Of course, specific professional development training will be key to this.
I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Bull, and my noble friend Lady Thornton on the importance of early intervention. It is critical to prevent unmet needs escalating. This is often referred to for early years educators, but early intervention with any problem as it arises is critical. We have to address emerging needs through early years work. We have launched new training resources to help them support children with developmental differences and announced further training places for early years SENCOs, for example, targeted at settings in the most disadvantaged areas.
I am sure Members will be aware of the work around the national professional qualification for SENCOs, to make sure that they get the additional knowledge and skills that they need. We are supporting the kind of teaching that will support children with SEND, including those with dyscalculia.
High-quality teaching is critical, as we know. Recruiting and retaining expert teachers is fundamental. We cannot get away from this, which is why we are committed to recruiting an additional 6,500 new expert teachers across secondary and special schools and in our colleges over the course of this Parliament, and, as I have said, introducing a range of training reforms to ensure that teachers have the skills to support all pupils, including those, I stress, with dyscalculia. It is an area which will move up the agenda as we talk about our general approach to SEND.
I thank the noble Lord, Lord Tarassenko, for sharing his experience in the important project that he has been involved in. We are also funding the maths hubs programme, a school-led network aimed at improving the teaching of mathematics for all pupils in publicly funded schools. This includes training and making sure that learning is sequenced coherently so it makes sense to pupils. That is what has come across, and through that, recognition and understanding of the needs of children with dyscalculia are going to be fundamental.
The noble Lord, Lord Hampton, raised the importance of maths in transition. We need to make sure that we have the appropriate online provisions as well. The noble Baroness, Lady Bull, mentioned the key point about qualifications linked to the curriculum assessment that is happening in the review we are undertaking, which will come out in the autumn.
We are well aware that support given across the system is variable and we want a consistent, inclusive approach to supporting neurodivergent children and young people in mainstream education. That is why we are delivering the PINS programme, deploying specialists from both health and education workforces to upskill primary schools to support neurodivergent children—I hope that answers the points raised by the noble Baroness, Lady O’Loan, and the noble Lord, Lord Mott.
The whole-school approach is so important, so we are not reliant on a specific diagnosis. That has come up several times and we must recognise the support and the range of needs that are out there. Not waiting for a diagnosis and getting early support in right across the system—effective early identification—are absolutely key to this.
Our Neurodivergence Task and Finish Group will be building on this and providing further insights on what provision and support in mainstream educational settings will look like within an inclusive system. We have been gathering evidence from across the piece. Professor Guldberg, the chair of the group, recently met stakeholders with lived experience, particularly representatives of those with dyscalculia and the Dyscalculia Network.
I thank the noble Lord, Lord Hampton, again, for his contribution to the teaching profession and his dedicated interest. It is important to hear this. Just picking up one of his points: in all of this drive to improve teaching, AI should be seen as a really valuable tool in helping us go forward.
I could say a lot more on the curriculum and assessment review, but we will get other opportunities to move that forward. Responding to my noble friend Baroness Thornton, I agree with her analysis, and that of the noble Baroness, Lady Bull, that dyscalculia has not received the same recognition or attention as dyslexia or those who struggle with speech and language. I also agree that parents should not need private capital to pay for specialist maths teachers and they should get the support as a right. That is why we are investing in the school workforce, to meet the needs of all children, including those with neurodivergence such as dyscalculia, and we are investing in our maths hubs and early intervention, with the needs of children at the heart of it.
I am very conscious that my time is coming to an end, but, in closing the debate, I will say that we must recognise those working across all of the systems, in the interests of our children and young people. The knowledge and understanding of children with SEND are increasing.
I want to reinforce the reason we are reforming the SEND programme. I cannot be specific about when that will come, but it is urgent. Another important aspect is that we want to make sure that we pull together children with lived experience and put their voices at the heart of everything we do. We are committed to an approach rooted in partnership, with all our work across the piece being guided by this, making sure that front-line professionals, leaders and experts listen to children and their families. We will work together in an integrated way going forward. We can transform the outcomes of all young people with SEND only if we listen and work together on solutions.
Again, I make a special plea. We all know that effective early identification and intervention can reduce the impact of the special need or the disability in the long term. There is so much evidence around this. We all have an obligation to move forward, working within the community, and improving inclusivity and expertise so that we can move forward. Again, as well as the noble Lord, Lord Hampton, I would like to pay tribute to those professionals who have worked tirelessly to help move this forward. We have several reviews coming forward and I know we all look forward with interest to making sure that our part of that interest is reflected in the reforms that we need to make, improving lives and improving the life chances of so many young people.