My daughter was recently diagnosed with dyscalculia – a specific learning difficulty that makes maths hell. She can’t learn her times tables; or rather, she practises them every evening, only to find they have vanished again by morning. Numbers are mere squiggles to her, stripped of meaning and floating chaotically around the page. When she is asked to calculate how many pencils Nadia can afford to buy if each pencil costs 8p and Nadia has £5, she starts to cry – and so do I.
