By Ewan Dennis, KS5 Maths Lead at Burlington House School
Sarah sits frozen at her desk, staring at a Functional Skills exam paper. Her hands are shaking slightly. ‘I know this,’ she whispers to herself, ‘I did this yesterday.’ But the numbers seem to swim on the page, and her mind has gone completely blank. Meanwhile, in the same room, James is working steadily through the paper using the chunking method you taught him last week, but he’s spent ten minutes on a question asking him to compare 0.5 and 0.25 because his brain doesn’t ‘see’ which is larger. The struggle here is the same, but the cause is entirely different, and therefore so is the support that can be offered.
Both of these situations result in the same perceived struggle with mathematics, but their causes are different. Sarah has maths anxiety, and James has dyscalculia.
Understanding the difference: dyscalculia and maths anxiety
Dyscalculia is a specific learning difficulty which affects the acquisition of arithmetic and other areas of mathematics. More broadly, the British Dyslexia Association describes how:
In dyscalculia, the most commonly observed cognitive impairment is a pronounced and persistent difficulty with numerical magnitude processing and understanding that presents in age related difficulties with naming, ordering and comparing physical quantities and numbers, estimating and place value.
People with dyscalculia may struggle with a wide range of number-related tasks outside of the classroom, including budgeting, reading timetables or following recipes.
Maths anxiety is psychological and emotional – it’s the fear, stress or dread that comes with doing maths. This can develop at any point in life, often following negative experiences, pressure or repeated failure. Someone with maths anxiety might understand the concepts perfectly well when calm, but their anxiety interferes with their ability to perform in a test or classroom setting. Physical symptoms can include a racing heart, sweating, or mental blanking. According to a study by KPMG for the National Numeracy Trust:
35% of adults say that doing maths makes them feel anxious, while one in five are so fearful it even makes them feel physically sick.
The key distinction between dyscalculia and maths anxiety lies in the origins, consistency and timeline of each issue.
Dyscalculia is about how your brain is wired to process and understand numbers. Maths anxiety is about the feeling or reaction you have when encountering maths. It is an emotional response that can block the demonstration of knowledge you have previously learnt. With maths anxiety being an emotional response, it means mathematical performance varies dramatically depending on stress levels. Individuals may solve problems easily when in casual conversation, but freeze when it’s called a test or when they feel they are being watched.
For people with dyscalculia, the struggles are consistent across situations and environments, and will often be apparent in number-related activities that aren’t typically thought of as maths – telling the time, remembering PIN numbers or estimating reasonable prices.
Maths anxiety can develop at any point in an individual’s life, often relating to experiences such as a harsh teacher, public failure, timed test or comparison to peers. Dyscalculia presents from early childhood, though it is often underdiagnosed, particularly as it usually co-occurs with other learning differences or needs like ADHD, dyslexia, developmental language disorder or developmental coordination disorder.
The distinction is important here, because understanding the challenges a student faces is the first step towards providing the targeted support they need. If anxiety is the primary concern, the focus should be on building confidence and reducing pressures, allowing students to access their existing maths skills and knowledge. If a student has dyscalculia, stress-management strategies are not enough – they need alternative ways to access the concepts.
Supporting students with maths anxiety
When I sat down with my Burlington House School colleagues to discuss supporting students with maths anxiety, we realised something important. While many of these strategies can be helpful for all students, they’re absolutely essential for those carrying the weight of maths anxiety. These aren’t just ‘nice to haves’, they’re the difference between a student who shuts down, and a student who stays engaged.
We brainstormed what’s worked best in our specialist context, what we’ve seen make the difference, and, just as importantly, what hasn’t worked. What follows is not from a textbook, it’s from our classrooms, our students and our teaching experiences.
Creating a psychologically safe environment
This is your foundation, based on neuroscience. When students feel anxious, their amygdala – the part of the brain responsible for emotional processing – activates. You cannot think mathematically when your brain is in threat mode. So creating safety isn’t a nice bonus, it’s a prerequisite for learning.
Celebrate mistakes
Cultivating a ‘confident to be wrong’ culture is vital to reducing these feelings of being under threat. In our classrooms we have worked hard to reframe mistakes as valuable insights rather than failures. If a student asks, ‘is this right?’, we respond with ‘tell me your thinking’ rather than a yes/no answer. This is shifting the focus from correctness to reasoning.
We’ve had to train ourselves to maintain neutral, curious expressions when students make errors. The goal is to become unreadable when it comes to correctness, but warm and engaged when it comes to thinking and puzzling through an answer. We celebrate interesting mistakes as they help us understand the concept better, as the brain makes and builds connections.
Importantly, this only works if it’s genuine. Students can sense fake enthusiasm. Modelling it ourselves goes some way to making this an authentic classroom culture. When we make errors on the board, we verbalise our thinking: ‘hang on, that doesn’t look right, let me check my working…’ or, ‘I can see where I went wrong there, let me go back a few steps.’ This normalises the process of finding mistakes and learning from them.
Empathise, but don’t catastrophise
We’ve had to have some difficult conversations with well-meaning colleagues and parents about the next one. When a student expresses frustration with maths and an adult responds with something like, ‘I was terrible at maths! I’ve never used it since school’, they think they’re building rapport. What they’re actually doing is validating the idea that maths is something you can just go through life without needing, and suggesting that struggling with maths is an identity, not a challenge to overcome.
Instead, we encourage the response: ‘maths can be challenging, and it’s okay to find it hard. Let’s work out what support you need’. The key here is allowing students to own the difficulty without accepting defeat. Adults can and should express empathy when students come to them with these challenges, without giving them permission to give up.
Build positive associations
An extension of removing these negative associations is ensuring maths is never used as punishment. This seems obvious but it still happens in some settings. Each one of us when brainstorming had examples from other schools where maths worksheets were given in exclusions, or extra maths homework was assigned as a consequence for poor behaviour.
This approach sends a clear message: maths is the bad thing that happens when you’ve done something wrong. For a student already carrying maths anxiety, this compounds the problem. Maths becomes associated with shame, consequences and isolation.
Language matters
Language also plays an important role here. In a setting where students are working across Functional Skills Entry Level, Functional Skills, iGCSE and A Level, the way we talk about these different routes is critical. We’ve had to push back on phrases that carry a value judgement, like ‘moving down to..’ or ‘dropping to…’ or even ‘just doing basic maths’.‘Moving down’ suggests failure and hierarchy. ‘Just’ diminishes the achievement. ‘Basic’ implies it’s lesser, easier, not real maths.
Instead we have real thought and frank considerations of appropriate pathways for different students. GCSE may be the more well trodden path, but it isn’t for everyone. Therefore we frame Functional Skills for what it is; an alternative pathway or route that focuses on mastering key practical skills rather than the broader content coverage of the GCSE. It’s not easier or lesser; it’s different in purpose and structure. The outcomes are equivalent – a pass at Level 2 Functional Skills is equal to the standard pass of grade 4 at GCSE. It’s the same destination, with a different route.
This matters beyond just being kind, it’s about whether students engage at all. If they believe the qualification they’re working towards is less valuable than those their peers are doing, or is designed for people who ‘can’t do real maths’, their anxiety multiplies and their motivation crashes. Frame it as a valid, valuable pathway and their whole approach shifts.
Teaching approaches that reduce pressure
Creating safety is the foundation, but anxiety also responds to how we structure the learning itself. These are the teaching approaches that we have found to have worked, and can be adapted to learning at home or in other contexts.
Find the sweet spot
An important first step is finding the ‘Goldilocks’ zone, pitching the content at the right level for the student. This is arguably the most important, and most difficult skill when it comes to teaching students with maths anxiety. Too easy, and you confirm their belief that they can’t do ‘real’ or ‘advanced’ maths. Too hard and you trigger the anxiety spiral: ‘See? I knew I couldn’t do this’.
The right level is where a student needs to stretch, but has the tools and support to succeed. In our setting, we’ve found this means really knowing each student’s current confidence level, not just their ability. This means matching the challenge to where they are now, not where you think they should be based on age or year group. You should also be prepared to act quickly to adjust, if you pitch something and see a shutdown is happening, you haven’t failed as a teacher or a parent. You’ve just found the edge of their comfort zone. Scale back, build confidence and then try again.
Think creatively
The next teaching approach is highlighted by one of our most powerful phrases: ‘Show me another way you could solve this’. When we encourage exploration and reward creativity in mathematical thinking, we’re doing several things at once:
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We’re communicating that there isn’t only one correct method (which reduces pressure)
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We’re validating different thinking styles
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We’re building metacognition (students thinking about their thinking)
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We’re making maths feel less like a set of rules to follow and more like problem solving
In practice, this means when a student solves a problem, we might ask them to put their thinking to paper, use a different method to get to the same answer, or explain how one approach differs from another. We’ve had brilliant discussions where students realise their ‘wrong’ method was actually a valid alternative approach.
Encouraging creative or alternative problem-solving strategies also requires avoiding rote-learning as a primary teaching strategy. When students with maths anxiety are forced to memorise without understanding, they build fragile knowledge that evaporates the moment pressure hits. They might be able to recite, ‘7✕8=56’ in a calm moment, but in a test? Gone…
Instead we focus on pattern understanding and having strategies available. Can’t remember 7✕8? Then use what we do know, if the student knows 7✕7=49, then use that and add another 7. Or double 7 four times. Or use our favourite lattice method. Or a times table trick. The goal is mathematical thinking, not performing memorisation under pressure. All these fluid approaches mean that students who have struggled with times tables for years, now are exploring patterns and building understanding.
Stop the clocks
Time pressure is a practical constraint of exams and tests, but it’s not conducive to a calm and anxiety-free learning environment. Few things trigger maths anxiety faster than the phrase, ‘you have 30 seconds to answer these questions’. The combination of maths and time pressure creates a perfect storm of panic.
We know that students will need to work within time limits eventually if they are working towards qualifications, but there is a huge difference between building time awareness gradually and throwing students into timed tests without the scaffolding to support this.
Our approach involves introducing time awareness gently. Let students work at their own pace, and then as confidence builds, slowly introduce the time awareness: ‘have a sense of how long this takes you’ rather than, ‘you must finish in 10 minutes’. For exam preparation, it should be a gradual build up from untimed practice, to generous time limits, towards something more akin to exam conditions once the mathematical confidence is solid.
Acknowledge difference
These teaching approaches are all about acknowledging that different students require different routes to learning, and will find different concepts more or less challenging than their peers. Four of the most damaging words to students with maths anxiety are, ‘it’s just common sense’. When you say those four words, the student hears, ‘this is easy,’ ‘you should already know this,’ or ‘if you don’t understand now, you never will.’ We have banned this phrase from our department, because what feels like common sense to one person is the result of years of mathematical experience building neural pathways. To a student who doesn’t have those pathways yet, it genuinely isn’t common sense.
What do we say instead? ‘Once you’ve seen this pattern a few times it becomes more intuitive’, or ‘this builds on concepts we’ve worked on before’, or, ‘let me show you the thinking behind this’. We acknowledge that mathematical reasoning is learned, not innate, and that struggling with it doesn’t mean you’re lacking common sense.
Different needs, different approaches: Supporting dyscalculia
Where anxiety needs emotional safety and reduced pressure, dyscalculia needs alternative ways to access mathematical concepts. Teaching and classroom strategies that reduce anxiety will be helpful for all students, but they don’t target the neurological barriers students with this specific learning difference face. Some approaches that have worked in our classrooms include:
Multisensory and visual
Colour-coding, clear visual hierarchies and consistent layouts aren’t nice-to-haves, they’re essentials. This is because dyscalculic students often experience visual-spatial disorientation, where numbers may seem to ‘float’ or lose their place value on a crowded page. Our materials use strong visual organisation to help students navigate the mathematical information in front of them. Using color to differentiate between columns or consistent bold headings to separate steps in a word problem reduces the ‘noise’ of a mathematical task, providing a clear roadmap for the student’s eye. When the presentation is predictable, the anxiety of ‘where do I start?’ begins to fade.
Similarly, manipulatives aren’t just for younger learners. Our older students use numicons, Cuisenaire rods, timetables charts and visual models because their brains need to see and touch what numbers represent, not just work with symbols. By using physical objects, we offload the mental ‘heavy lifting’ of visualisation. This allows students to engage mathematical concepts like ratio, area or algebra in a tactile way, turning an invisible problem into a tangible, logical experience.
Different doesn’t mean deficit
A student who uses the Japanese method or the lattice method for multiplication or needs to draw exploding dots for division isn’t behind. They’re using strategies that match how their brain processes mathematical information. Just as celebrating creative problem-solving can support students with anxiety, it also helps those whose brains are wired differently to find an approach that clicks for them. We teach multiple methods and let students use what works.
Scaffolding that stays
Unlike anxiety support where you gradually remove scaffolds as confidence builds, students with dyscalculia often need their tools and strategies long-term.
Just as we wouldn’t ask a nearsighted student to eventually grow out of their glasses, we recognise that these tools provide the baseline support necessary for students with dyscalculia to access the curriculum. By keeping these scaffolds in place, we prevent the student’s working memory from being overwhelmed by basic retrieval tasks, freeing up their cognitive resources to focus on problem-solving and conceptual understanding.
The strategies above are starting points, not comprehensive solutions- dyscalculia support is a whole article in itself. But understanding that it’s neurologically different from anxiety helps explain why ‘just relax and try’ again doesn’t work for these students. They need different tools, not different attitudes.
Dyscalculia and maths anxiety: When they occur together
Despite being different challenges, there is often overlap between dyscalculia and maths anxiety in young people. This is because learners with dyscalculia may face repeated ‘failures’ in a school context, especially if they aren’t afforded appropriate support or understanding from the adults around them. These perceived failures can lead to low self esteem and anxiety around maths-related tasks, presenting a double challenge for the learner – both a neurological and emotional barrier to the subject.
Recognising instances of overlap is important for teachers, parents and carers because if we only treat the anxiety, and not understand the processing differences; or only focus on teaching strategies, without building emotional safety; we’re only doing half the job to support the student. A two pronged approach is required: making maths emotionally safe whilst teaching in ways that match their learning profile.
In sum
Our department has learned that when you stop asking, ‘why can’t they just do it?’ and start asking, ‘what’s getting in the way?’, everything changes. Sometimes the barrier is fear. Sometimes it’s how their brain processes numbers. Often it’s both. Once you understand what you’re actually addressing, you can stop throwing generic interventions at students and start giving them what they need.
You won’t eliminate maths anxiety overnight – it’s built up over years, sometimes over a whole educational lifetime. But every time you maintain curiosity instead of disappointment at a mistake, every time you validate a pathway rather than label it as lesser, you’re chipping away at that anxiety. Small shifts, consistently applied, create seismic change in students’ relationship with maths.
Similarly, a student will never ‘get over’ or lose their dyscalculia, it’s with them for life. But by providing different routes to access mathematical concepts, appropriate supports to engage in classroom learning, and genuine understanding of dyscalculia as a difference, not a deficit, you can open up a world of engagement with numbers they might never have thought possible.
Start with one thing, then add another. The transformation happens in the accumulation of small, intentional choices.
Ewan Dennis, MPhys (Hons), PGCE (QTS), joined Burlington House School in 2022 as a physics teacher in the Sixth Form. He became Maths lead in 2024 and in 2026 was appointed as STEM Lead. Ewan enjoys cycling, rugby and great vegetarian food as well as niche indie revival bands.
