Dubai Schools & KHDA Inclusive Maths | Times Tables Software

When I looked into the latest KHDA inspection reports and UAE education forum discussions, one theme keeps surfacing: inclusive attainment is no longer a tick-box. Inspectors are looking for evidence that Students of Determination (the UAE's terminology for pupils with SEND) are making *measurable progress* in core subjects, mathematics in particular.

That shift matters. It moves the conversation away from "do you have a policy?" and towards "can you show us it working?" For SENCOs and senior leaders, that's a meaningful change in what you need to demonstrate during an inspection cycle.

The specific area that stands out to me is maths fluency. KHDA reports frequently cite gaps between Students of Determination and their peers in procedural fluency, number confidence and times-tables recall. These are foundational skills. If a child doesn't have quick, reliable access to multiplication facts by the end of Year 4, every subsequent maths concept becomes harder to hold.

Here's something that doesn't always make it into inspection frameworks but sits underneath almost every case I read about: maths anxiety. It's not the same as not knowing the answer. It's a genuine emotional and physiological response to maths tasks that shuts down working memory and makes learning feel impossible.

For neurodivergent children and those with SEND, the risk of developing maths anxiety is higher. Traditional drill-and-practice methods, timed tests on whiteboards, being called on in front of the class, these can compound the anxiety rather than address the underlying fluency gap. By the time a child reaches Year 5 or 6 without solid times-tables knowledge, the anxiety and the gap have often become tangled together.

What I keep hearing from teachers in our early conversations is that they know this, they see it every day, but they feel stuck between the pressure to move curriculum content forward and the reality that some children haven't yet secured the foundations. Dubai international schools face this with the added complexity of highly diverse classrooms, multilingual learners, and the particular scrutiny of KHDA.

This is where I want to be honest about what the research says and what we're seeing ourselves as a young company. The broader evidence base for game-based learning in maths is solid. When children are genuinely engaged, when they choose to play, when they feel safe making mistakes in a game context, their fluency improves. That's not a controversial claim.

What's less talked about is the social dimension. Multiplayer maths games do something that solo apps can't: they create a shared experience. A child who would shut down at a paper drill can stay engaged far longer when they're playing alongside a classmate, even a classmate in a different classroom or a different school entirely. The competitive and collaborative pressure of a real opponent shifts the emotional experience of maths practice in a way that genuinely surprises teachers when they first see it.

As our founder Gal Darrash puts it, *"We built XTables around the games kids already love because we wanted maths practice to feel like a choice, not a punishment. That matters even more for children who've already learned to fear the subject."*

For Students of Determination specifically, the design of the experience matters enormously. Interfaces that are visually calm, that don't punish hesitation harshly, that give children a sense of agency and progress, these aren't nice-to-haves. They're the difference between a child engaging and a child disengaging.

When I think about how this applies to the schools KHDA is inspecting, a few things stand out.

First, KHDA inspectors are looking for evidence of adapted learning experiences. A school that can point to a specific digital tool designed with SEND and neurodivergent needs in mind, one that tracks individual pupil progress and supports differentiation, is in a much stronger position than one that says "we use the same platform for everyone."

Second, the multiplayer element of a tool like XTables Champions matters for inclusion in a deeper sense. It's not about putting SEND children in a separate corner with a tablet. It's about giving them a route into the same shared mathematical experience as their peers, on terms that work for them. That's what genuine inclusion looks like in a classroom, and it's what KHDA is increasingly trying to see evidence of.

Third, fluency-focused intervention in Years 4 to 6 is precisely the window KHDA highlights. These are the years where gaps either close or compound. A school that has a consistent, evidenced approach to times-tables fluency across that age range, one that specifically includes Students of Determination, is telling a coherent story to inspectors.

XTables Champions is a maths fluency and times-tables web app built specifically with children who have maths anxiety, SEND, and neurodivergent needs in mind. We use popular games that children already know and love, and we've put multiplayer at the centre of the experience because we believe engagement is the prerequisite for everything else.

We're a founder-led, early-stage company. We're not going to claim we have all the answers or that we've cracked every challenge in inclusive EdTech. What we do know is that the schools we speak to are dealing with real, specific problems around maths fluency and SEND attainment, and that the tools available to them have often been designed without those children in mind. We're trying to build something different.

If you're a SENCO, Year 4-6 teacher or senior leader at a Dubai international school thinking about your KHDA preparation and your provision for Students of Determination in maths, I'd love to talk. Reach out to us at XTables Champions and let's have a genuine conversation about what your school needs. No pressure, just a chat about whether what we're building might fit.