Author: Caroline Hamilton

On 3rd March 2026, educators, parents, learners and researchers around the world will come together to mark Dyscalculia Day — a day dedicated to raising awareness, improving understanding, and challenging long-held assumptions about mathematical difficulty.

This day matters deeply to us. Too many children and adults grow up believing they are “bad at maths”, when in reality they are navigating a learning difference that has gone unseen, misunderstood, or unsupported.

What is dyscalculia?

Dyscalculia is a specific learning difficulty that affects the way people understand and work with numbers. It can impact:

• Number sense and quantity

• Recall of basic number facts

• Understanding place value

• Working with time, money, and measurement

• Following multi-step mathematical processes

Importantly, dyscalculia is not a reflection of intelligence. Many people with dyscalculia have strong verbal reasoning, creativity, or problem-solving skills but maths can feel disorientating, overwhelming, or inaccessible without the right support.

It is estimated that ~6% of the population experience dyscalculia, yet it remains far less recognised than other learning differences. As a result, many learners are labelled as inattentive, careless, or lacking effort, rather than being given the understanding and adjustments they need.

Why dyscalculia day matters

Dyscalculia Day exists to shift the narrative.

It reminds us that:

• Maths difficulty is not a personal failing

• Early experiences of confusion can shape lifelong confidence

• Teaching approaches matter enormously

• Awareness is the first step towards inclusion

For educators, it’s an opportunity to reflect on how maths is taught and how flexible our approaches truly are.
For parents, it offers reassurance and language to better understand their child’s experience.
For adults, it provides validation, often for the first time, that their struggles have a name and a reason.

Rethinking maths for all learners

We believe that clarity, structure and careful sequencing are essential, particularly for learners who find maths difficult. When concepts are broken down, language is precise, and representations are consistent, maths becomes easier to navigate and less intimidating.

Supporting learners with dyscalculia requires:

• Explicit teaching

• Thoughtful use of representations

• Time to build secure foundations

• An understanding that confidence and competence grow together

Dyscalculia Day aligns closely with our missions: to rethink inclusion and to rethink confidence.

Join the Dyscalculia Day 2026 Conference

To mark Dyscalculia Day 2026, the Dyscalculia Network is hosting a dedicated online conference bringing together researchers, educators, parents and individuals with lived experience.

The conference offers:

• Practical insights into recognising and supporting dyscalculia

• Research-informed approaches to inclusive maths teaching

• Perspectives from adults and young people with lived experience

• Guidance for schools, families and workplaces

If you care about inclusive maths education this is a valuable opportunity to deepen your understanding and be part of a growing conversation.

👉 Find out more and join the Dyscalculia Day 2026 Conference here:
https://dyscalculianetwork.com/dyscalculia-day-2026/

We’re delighted to share that James Lansdale-Clegg will be joining us from the start of January as our Director of Educational Projects.

James joins the leadership team to drive the delivery of our expanding portfolio of projects. He will play a key role in turning ideas into reality and ensure we keep momentum across a suite of projects.

Alongside working with schools, James will collaborate with education suppliers, publishers, government organisations and partners to develop high-quality advice, content and services. He’ll work closely with the Managing Director and leadership team to make sure our work is focused, expertly crafted and genuinely useful for teachers in the classroom.

James brings a deep understanding of the education landscape, alongside a practical and thoughtful approach to delivery. His role will add an extra layer of assurance across our work, with a clear focus on quality and coherence that strengthens and supports the excellent work already happening across the team.

Caroline Hamilton, CEO, said:

“We’re proud of the work we do and proud of the standards we set ourselves. James is someone who consistently delivers high-quality work, even under pressure. He brings focus, expertise, and care – and I’m really excited to have him on board.”

Mary-Kate Connolly, Managing Director, added:

“I’m genuinely excited to be working with James again. He’s someone who gets things done, on time and to a high standard. It’s great to have him joining the team.”

James joins at a time of real momentum for Rethink Maths. Following several appointments made before Christmas, we’re preparing for a busy and exciting 2026. There’s plenty happening behind the scenes and we’re looking forward to sharing more about what we’re building in the near future.

If you’re working on a maths project (UK or international) and would like our support – whether that’s shaping ideas, developing exceptional maths content or delivering at scale – James would love to hear from you.

At Rethink Maths we can’t wait to celebrate World Nursery Rhyme Week (WNRW) taking place on 10th to 14th November 2025. WNRW is a wonderful celebration of the songs and rhymes that so many of us grew up with.

But nursery rhymes aren’t just fun little tunes, they’re powerful early learning tools.

One of our missions is ‘Rethink Foundations’, we believe in building deep understanding, lasting confidence and joyful learning through interaction, shared experiences, and play. And nursery rhymes are one way this can be done.

Why nursery rhymes matter

Nursery rhymes:

✅ help children hear patterns in language

✅ support memory and sequencing

✅ encourage early speaking and confidence

✅ offer rhythm and repetition – great for emerging number sense

When a child chants, “One, two, buckle my shoe” or joins in with the actions to, “Round and round the garden,” they’re not just enjoying a moment with you, they’re starting to embed core mathematical ideas:

• Order and sequence
• Counting and comparison
• Spatial awareness
• Patterns and repetition

These foundations support children long before they encounter formal maths.

Singing together

What matters most is how nursery rhymes are shared. Singing together creates a vital sense of belonging and connection.

When a rhyme is shared it can:

• help build language and communication skills
• provide warmth and reassurance
• enable the child to see facial expressions and feel the rhythm of speech
• support emotional security and engagement.
• help the child tune into language and number patterns more deeply

A rhyme becomes learning when it becomes a moment together.

Top tips for bringing maths out of nursery rhymes

1. Sing slowly and emphasise the rhythmic pattern.

This helps children notice the beat and the order.

2. Add actions.

Actions support memory and coordination. For example, “Wind the Bobbin Up” involves movement, direction, and sequencing.

3. Pause to let the child join in.

Leaving small gaps encourages participation and turns it into shared communication.

4. Play with objects or props.

For “Five Little Ducks,” use toys or fingers to help children see the number changing.

5. Repeat, repeat, repeat.

Repetition strengthens memory and confidence. Children learn through doing things again and again.

Some of Rethink Maths favourite rhymes

Why Rethink Maths loves nursery rhymes

At the heart of Rethink Foundations is the belief that early mathematical thinking grows through:

• Gesturing
• Language
• Visualisation

Nursery rhymes connect all three.

They don’t require special equipment, they travel with you anywhere, and they build confident learners by making maths feel natural, joyful, and shared.

Nursery rhymes are maths in the real world: counting with fingers, moving in rhythm, noticing patterns in sound and action.

They help lay emotional and cognitive building blocks that later support confident problem-solvers.

A final thought

Whether you are a parent singing during morning routines or a practitioner modelling rhyme in story time, you are building early maths. One gentle rhythm, one shared giggle, one rhyme at a time.

So this World Nursery Rhyme Week, celebrate the small moments.

They’re doing big things.

Check out our free resources to support you bring WNRW to life!

Today I was so inspired by a conversation with Kate Henshall that I had the urge to share it! It reminded me to take a step back and think carefully and deeply about using ‘concrete’ materials and the way children learn.

When we talk about the Concrete–Pictorial–Abstract (CPA) approach in mathematics, many of us instinctively jump straight to the humble counter or cube as our starting point for “concrete.” But have we, perhaps, skipped over some crucial stages in a child’s development of number sense?

Take the number 3 as an example.

At the most fundamental level, learners experience “three” in their world:

• Three apples on the table. These are real and familiar.

• From here, we might move to a photograph of three apples, or even three toy apples. Both are still concrete in feel and appearance but already one step removed.

• A further step could be a drawing of three apples, a simplified representation that still connects strongly to experience.

Only after these stages might we present:

• Three counters or three drawn circles to stand in for apples.

And here lies a significant leap. The child must now accept that these unfamiliar objects (especially if they differ in shape or colour) represent the apples they know. If the apples were red but the counters are yellow, that’s yet another layer of abstraction for the learner to process.

Each of these subtle shifts marks an important point of cognitive development. If we skip too quickly to counters, we may miss opportunities to strengthen understanding and recognition of “three-ness” in contexts children already trust and understand.

So perhaps we should broaden our view of what counts as concrete. The journey from the real to the representational is a gradual shift through different layers of experience, not one big leap. We must also remember that this journey will not look the same for every child. Some will move through it more easily than others.

Maybe the question we should be asking is not just “Are we using concrete?” but “Have we chosen the right concrete, at the right stage, for this learner?”

Mathematics is more than just numbers, formulas, and procedures – it’s a way of thinking. At its core, maths is about problem-solving: breaking down complex situations, identifying patterns, and applying logical reasoning to find solutions. It is great to see problem solving as a core focus of our national curriculum and long may that continue.

That’s why explicitly teaching problem-solving strategies is so important. It equips students with the skills and confidence to tackle unfamiliar problems, nurturing a mindset that extends beyond the classroom.

Celebrating the work of teachers

First, I’d like to take a moment to appreciate the incredible work that teachers do every day. Teaching problem-solving isn’t easy. It requires patience, a deeper subject knowledge, and the ability to guide students through uncertainty while maintaining engagement. Teachers are already using rich tasks, real-world contexts, and open-ended questions to develop mathematical thinkers. Their dedication lays the foundation for students to build resilience and curiosity in the face of mathematical challenges.  However, during teacher training, we don’t train teachers to teach problem-solving explicitly so it is no surprise that many rely on teaching in the way they were taught.

The case for explicit strategies

We often encourage students to “think logically” or “just try a different approach” when they get stuck. But what if they don’t know how? If we want students to become true problem-solvers, we need to give them specific strategies and model their use. Some key strategies we could be encouraging could include:

• Working backwards – Starting from the solution or end state and retracing their steps to understand the structure of a problem.
• Drawing a diagram – Visualising relationships and using powerful techniques such as bar modelling.
• Looking for patterns – Identifying sequences or repeated structures to make predictions.
• Making a simpler case – Often this method helps students see the structure of the problem in a more manageable, smaller number set before tackling the actual numbers.
• Using logical reasoning – Eliminating impossible cases and testing different possibilities systematically.

By explicitly teaching these strategies, we empower students to approach problems with confidence and flexibility.

To try and exemplify some of the methods I talk about here I wanted to take a question from last year’s KS2 SATs problems.  It was towards the end of the first reasoning paper.

Working backwards method

Encourage them to start from the end (in this case 8 pm) and retrace steps to find what happened in the earlier.

1. At 8 pm, there are 40 empty seats.

Since the hall has 1,250 seats in total.

Seats that are filled at 8 pm must be 1250 – 40 = 1210

2. At 7 pm, we know 880 seats were filled.

3. So, the number of seats filled between 7 pm and 8 pm must be the difference between these numbers.

1210 – 880 = 330

Drawing a diagram method

A different strategy is for children to create a simple visual (like a bar or boxes) to show changes from 7 pm to 8 pm.

1. Draw a bar to represent all 1,250 seats.
2. Mark the portion that is already filled at 7 pm (880 seats).
3. Show that by 8 pm, only 40 seats are empty.
4. The difference between these two “filled” sections (1,250 – 880 – 40 = 330) represents the newly occupied seats.

Making a simpler case method.

1. Create a smaller-scale version of the same scenario. Suppose the hall had 100 seats instead of 1,250. At 7 pm, 70 seats are filled. By 8 pm, there are 5 empty seats.
2. Work through the simple version. If there are 5 empty seats, then 95 seats are filled at 8 pm. The number of seats filled between 7 pm and 8 pm is 95 − 70 = 25
3. Spot the pattern or logic in the simpler version. The difference between the number of seats filled at 7 pm and at 8 pm gives how many were filled during that hour.
4. Try to scale back up to the actual problem: Use the same approach for the real hall with 1,250 seats. There are 40 empty seats at 8 pm, so 1,250 – 40 = 1,210, replacing the smaller, easier to handle, numbers with the larger ones. Compare with the 880 seats filled at 7 pm to find 1,210 − 880 = 330

A call to evolve our approach

Mathematical problem-solving isn’t just for high attaining students or future mathematicians, it’s a critical life skill. In an ever-changing world, where problem-solving is at the heart of innovation and decision-making, we owe it to our students to equip them with these tools.

Teachers are already doing incredible work, but as a profession, we should continue pushing the boundaries. Let’s move beyond simply teaching students how to solve specific types of problems and focus on developing them as problem-solvers—capable, adaptable, and resilient in the face of the unknown.

So, what needs to change to bring this to life in classrooms?

1.      CPD for teachers about explicit problem-solving strategies.

2.      Teacher guidance within textbooks and resources that highlight the most appropriate strategies for each problem.

3.      Resources that are specifically designed to allow students to practice and experiment with the strategies they have been taught.

What are your go-to problem-solving strategies in the classroom? How do you help students develop their mathematical thinking? I’d love to hear your thoughts.

When we chose the word Rethink, it wasn’t just a brand decision, it was a mindset.

It’s a word that’s been quietly sitting at the centre of my thinking for a long time. As a leader. As a teacher. As a woman in education. And now, as someone building something new from the ground up.

I believe that sometimes, the most powerful thing you can do is pause… and ask:

• Does it have to be this way?
• What if we approached it differently?
• Who’s missing from this conversation?

I believe in it even more when you are asking those questions about something you have already worked on or built. It’s so easy to become emotionally attached to ideas or ways of doing things but in a fast paced, changing world we need to be flexible.

Rethinking doesn’t mean starting from scratch. Rethinking isn’t about fixing broken things. It’s about evolving what already works.

It means stepping back. Zooming out. Challenging assumptions. And listening to the voices that don’t usually get heard.

I’ve seen what happens when people are brave enough to rethink:

• Curriculum that truly works for all learners
• Workplaces that finally value introverted leadership
• Maths classrooms where girls feel seen, capable and empowered
• Businesses that follow purpose, not just the bottom line

Rethinking is essential to improving what already exists. Progress doesn’t happen by accident and in life, the job is never really done. When something is “working well enough” it’s easier to tweak than to reimagine. But I’ve found again and again that the most meaningful change starts with the quiet courage to ask: “Is this really serving the people it’s meant to in the best way it could?”

It’s the question I regularly come back to. I believe in the power of rethinking and reimagining, together.

What’s something you’ve rethought lately?

#Rethink #Education #Leadership #ChangeMakers #QuietLeadership