Maths Anxiety … and what you can do to help.

A Sydney Morning Herald article, written on 11 March 2025.

The content of this article, written in the Sydney Morning Herald on 11 March 2025, worries me!

Why?

A report by ACER (Australian Council for Education Research) analysing our latest PISA (OECD Programme for International Student Assessment) results show that “heightened rates of maths anxiety are associated with poorer academic outcomes, and the most anxious students are four years behind pupils who experience the least.”

And the fact that over 40% of our girls exhibit these “feelings of tension, fear or apprehension when … faced with mathematics-related tasks” … wow! That’s concerning!

The ‘societal’ attitudes towards maths, as spoken about by Dr Katherin Cartwright, president of MANSW (Mathematical Association of NSW) are also detrimental.

I’ve been talking about this - in person and on social media - for quite a while. I saw it when I was in the classroom. I heard it from kids. I heard it from parents. Maths anxiety is real and it “can interfere with working memory, increase cognitive load and make it harder for students to concentrate.”

And if we don’t do something about it in primary school, we will certainly know about it when they get to high school.

So how do we fix it?

How do we fix it?

Firstly, we stop using negative, unhelpful language around our children when speaking about maths. If your child believes you when you tell them about the Easter Bunny, Santa and the Tooth Fairy, they will believe you when you tell them negative things about maths.

And then?

We do something about it. We help build our children’s capacity and confidence in maths, rather than allowing them to develop negative thoughts about the subject and their ability to be mathematical, despite how we feel about it. We build their belief in themselves.

But, how do we do that?

By incorporating maths into your everyday activities, making it relevant, although it’s difficult to know what your child has covered and where they are up to in maths, unless your school is very diligent about this.

But this is why I built MathsBites.

MathsBites is an easy to use, up-to-date resource built just for you, so that you can help support your child with maths because it helps you understand what your child is learning and how they’re learning it so you can support them at home using the way they are learning it at school… their strategies, their processes, their ways and their language.

MathsBites is designed to help you help them!

So, what now?

Obviously, I’d love you to sign up for a MathsBites subscription, if you haven’t already - but if you do nothing other than encourage your child to persevere, help build their capacity for frustration - which builds their resilience - during the learning stage which occurs between not knowing and knowing, and help them to talk through their thinking when completing maths tasks at home, that’s something.

And then, come and sign up. We’d love to have you.