Inclusive Maths: ADHD & Dyslexia | Times Tables Games

What I keep seeing in conversations with educators and in the wider SEN teacher training space is that neurodiversity awareness has genuinely matured. Schools are no longer satisfied with bolting an "accessibility" toggle onto software that was fundamentally designed for neurotypical learners. SENCOs are scrutinising the core design of tools, asking whether the product was built with SEN learners in mind from the start, or whether inclusion was added as an afterthought.

Timed tests are the clearest flashpoint. When I looked into this, the reasoning is straightforward: a countdown timer does not measure mathematical understanding. For a child with ADHD, it floods the working memory with anxiety before a single calculation is attempted. For a child with dyslexia, rapid visual processing of numbers under pressure compounds the difficulty. For a child with dyscalculia, it reinforces the belief that maths is something they will always be too slow for. The timer is not a neutral feature. It is a design choice, and it has consequences.

The schools moving fastest on this are not waiting for a policy mandate. They are making the switch now, at SENCO level, because they can see the harm in front of them.

Children with ADHD often have strong mathematical intuition. The problem is that the traditional "rapid recall" model of times tables practice was never designed for how their brains work. Attention regulation, working memory, and processing speed are all areas where ADHD creates real challenges, and a timed test hits all three at once.

What works far better, from everything I have read and from the early feedback we are getting from schools, is low-stakes repetition embedded inside something that already holds a child's attention. When a child is genuinely engaged in a game, the repetition happens naturally. They are not sitting there dreading the next question. They are trying to win at Snap.

This is the logic behind how XTables Champions works. The games, whether that is multiplayer Snap, Connect Four, or Battleship, are built so that times tables fluency develops as a byproduct of play. The child's focus is on the game. The maths is happening anyway.

For children with dyslexia, the challenge in maths is often less about numeracy itself and more about the way information is presented. Dense columns of numbers, abstract equations with no visual anchor, and rapid-fire questions that assume fluent symbol recognition all create unnecessary barriers.

Visual support is not a workaround. It is good teaching. When I looked at how SENCOs are approaching this, the consistent ask is for tools that show the relationship between numbers, not just the answer. A child who can see why 6 times 7 equals 42, through a visual array or a structured breakdown, is building genuine understanding rather than fragile surface recall.

This is exactly what our Show Me How™ feature is designed to do. Rather than simply presenting the correct answer after a wrong guess, Show Me How™ gives the child a visual breakdown of how that multiplication actually works. It is a small feature, but in our early conversations with schools, it is one of the things SENCOs respond to most warmly. It shifts the moment of getting something wrong from a source of shame into a moment of actual learning.

If you are a SENCO evaluating maths tools for your school, here is the honest checklist I would apply based on what I have been reading and hearing.

First, look at the core mechanic. Is the product built around speed and pressure, or around engagement and understanding? If the default experience involves a ticking clock, that is a design philosophy, not just a feature.

Second, ask how the tool responds to errors. Does it just mark something wrong and move on, or does it provide a visual or conceptual explanation? For SEN learners, the moment after a mistake is one of the highest-value teaching moments available.

Third, check what data the tool surfaces for you. A good SENCO dashboard should help you spot which children are avoiding certain question types, not just which ones are scoring below average. Avoidance is often the earliest signal of anxiety or a specific learning difficulty.

At XTables Champions, we have built SENCO flags directly into the analytics dashboard so that patterns worth investigating surface automatically. We are a young company and we will be honest about that, but this feature exists precisely because of conversations we have had with SENCOs who told us their biggest frustration was not knowing which children needed support until they had fallen significantly behind.

As our founder Gal Darrash puts it, "We built this because we kept hearing from parents and teachers that the existing tools were making children feel stupid. That is not a maths problem. That is a design problem."

For MATs considering inclusive EdTech at scale, the SENCO conversation is increasingly also a whole-school strategy conversation. Schools within a trust that adopt genuinely inclusive maths tools are not just supporting their SEN pupils. They are reducing low-level anxiety across a broader cohort, because the features that help a child with ADHD (low pressure, engaging format, visual support) are also features that help children without a formal diagnosis who simply find traditional drill-and-kill stressful.

In our early conversations with schools in the UK, including those exploring provision for both mainstream and resourced provision settings, the interest in tools that work across the full range of learners in a classroom is significant.

If you are a SENCO, a class teacher, or a school leader looking at your times tables provision for children with ADHD, dyslexia, or dyscalculia, I would genuinely encourage you to get in touch with us at XTables Champions.

We are not going to oversell what we do. We are a founder-led EdTech company at an early stage, and we are actively learning from the schools we work with. But we have built Show Me How™ visual breakdowns, a SENCO analytics dashboard, and a game-based format specifically because we believe SEN learners deserve maths tools that were designed for them, not adapted around them.

Visit xtableschampions.com or reach out directly to arrange a conversation about how XTables Champions can support your pupils. If you are a SENCO, a SEN lead within a MAT, or a teacher supporting children with maths anxiety, we would genuinely love to hear from you.