How do you want to raise more awareness of the condition?
The Artevelde University College Ghent is launching an educational package, under the name “Divided by numbers”, which includes a booklet with scientific information on the disability and advice for schools and parents. In an additional documentary, experts explain what is known about the condition and people with dyscalculia talk about the difficulties they experienced during their school years.

How did it affect their school careers and later lives?
As arithmetic skills are highly valued in primary schools, teachers often pushed them intensively to catch up with the rest of the class. When they didn’t succeed, their teachers assumed that they either refused to work hard or that they were not bright enough, resulting in a big blow to their self-confidence. In their later lives, they are confronted with daily limitations. They may, for example, have difficulty arriving anywhere on time because they can’t read the clock properly. Paying at the checkout of a supermarket can also prove a serious challenge. We don’t realise how much numbers determine our lives.

How can students with dyscalculia be helped?
In the first place it is important to make the correct diagnosis as early as possible through special maths tests. Although there is no cure for the disability, there are methods to stimulate students to get an academic degree in line with their intellectual potential. What’s essential is to slow down the learning process to the individual capabilities of the child, to repeat many exercises and to make abstract calculations concrete using materials such as cubes.