If your Year 4, 5 or 6 teachers are quietly dreading the maths lesson, you are far from alone. New findings from the Maths Anxiety Trust's 2026 Policy Paper show that over 54% of primary teachers experience external pressures that negatively affect their maths teaching, and a meaningful proportion report genuine maths teaching anxiety — the feeling of being ill-equipped to explain concepts clearly, especially to pupils with SEND or neurodivergent needs. When I read through this research, my immediate thought was: this is not a personal failing. It is a structural problem, and senior leaders are in a position to do something about it.
What the 2026 Research Actually Says
The Maths Anxiety Trust paper makes for uncomfortable reading if you care about staff wellbeing, and I think most senior leaders reading this do. More than half of primary teachers are working under pressure that specifically shows up in the maths classroom. That is not just a numbers problem for pupils. It is a people problem for your school.
What stood out to me reading the detail is that this anxiety is especially acute around neurodivergent and SEND pupils. Teachers who feel broadly confident in maths can still feel stuck when a child processes numbers differently, needs a longer runway, or simply disengages completely when the approach does not fit how their brain works. The gap between "I know my times tables" and "I can explain why 7 × 8 makes sense to a child with dyscalculia" is a real one, and no amount of subject knowledge training fully bridges it alone.
The finding that more than half of primary teachers are feeling this pressure is the kind of number that should give every senior leadership team pause.
Why This Is a Senior Leader Problem, Not Just a Teacher Problem
It is tempting to frame maths anxiety as something individual teachers need to overcome. But the research points elsewhere. External pressures, timetable constraints, mixed-ability groupings with limited TA support, and the sheer volume of KS2 maths content teachers are expected to deliver all pile up. A teacher who feels underprepared for a Tuesday morning maths lesson is not failing. They are under-resourced.
As a senior leader, the question worth sitting with is: what have we put in place that actually reduces the pressure on that teacher in that lesson?
Some schools answer this with CPD. That matters. But CPD takes time to land, it rarely covers every scenario, and it does nothing for the teacher standing in front of 30 children at 9am on a Thursday who has three pupils with different SEND profiles all needing something different from the same activity.
The Case for Tools That Do the Heavy Lifting
What I keep hearing in our early conversations with schools is a version of the same thing: teachers want something that runs itself, keeps children genuinely engaged, and gives them a moment to circulate and support rather than perform. That is not laziness. That is smart deployment of teacher attention.
This is exactly where the right EdTech can quietly make a difference. When a tool handles the structure, the progression, the immediate feedback loop and the engagement, the teacher is freed up to do what only a teacher can do: notice the child who is struggling, ask the right question, offer the right reassurance.
At XTables Champions, we built our maths fluency platform specifically with this in mind. The games are based on titles children already love, so buy-in happens fast, without the teacher having to sell the activity. The multiplayer format means children are intrinsically motivated to keep going. And because the design is SEND-friendly from the ground up, a teacher does not need to create separate differentiated versions of the task. The platform adapts to the child.
As our founder Gal Darrash puts it, *"We built this for the teacher who is brilliant with children but needs the maths practice side to just work, without extra prep, without extra pressure."*
That is not a small thing. For a teacher with maths teaching anxiety, removing the need to design and manage the practice element of a lesson is genuinely significant.
Supporting Non-Specialist and Neurodivergent-Facing Teachers Specifically
Many primary teachers are not maths specialists. They came through generalist training, and they are doing their best with a subject they may not have loved themselves. Add in a class that includes pupils with dyscalculia, ADHD, autism or other neurodivergent profiles, and the complexity multiplies quickly.
What I find encouraging about the 2026 research is that it names this honestly. It does not pretend the problem is smaller than it is. That honesty creates space for senior leaders to respond honestly too: to acknowledge that some of your teachers are struggling, that this is not their fault, and that your job is to give them better support structures, not more feedback about their subject knowledge.
SENCOs in particular are worth bringing into this conversation. If your SENCO and your Year 5 teacher are both trying to solve the same problem in isolation, something has gone wrong at the systems level. A shared tool that both understand, and that is designed for neurodivergent learners from the start, is one way to close that gap.
What Good Support Actually Looks Like in Practice
Based on what we are seeing in our early work with schools, the senior leaders who are making the most headway on this tend to do a few things consistently.
They make space for teachers to name the anxiety without shame. That means explicitly asking in staff meetings or one-to-ones: how are you feeling about your maths lessons? Not as a performance review question, but as a genuine check-in.
They audit what teachers are actually spending time on in maths planning, and they look for places where that time can be reclaimed. Automating routine practice, for instance, is one of the easiest wins.
They involve SENCOs in maths resourcing decisions, not just after a pupil has been flagged, but proactively, so that the tools chosen for the whole class are already suitable for the pupils who need the most support.
And they treat staff wellbeing in maths as a legitimate school improvement lever, not a soft extra. Because the evidence, including the 2026 research, is clear: how a teacher feels about maths shapes what their pupils experience in that classroom every single day.
Talk to Us About Supporting Your KS2 Teachers
If the Maths Anxiety Trust's findings resonate with what you are seeing in your school, I would genuinely encourage you to explore what XTables Champions can offer your Year 4-6 classrooms. We designed the platform to reduce the burden on teachers, not add to it, and we are especially focused on making sure it works for pupils with SEND and maths anxiety.
If you are a senior leader, SENCO or class teacher who wants to understand how it fits your school's specific needs, get in touch with us at xtableschampions.com. We are a small, founder-led team and we will give you a real conversation, not a sales script.