20 May Dyscalculia Assessment in Rome
If there is a problem with maths, we will find it. That is the commitment. If an international school student in Rome is struggling with maths and no one yet knows why, the assessment is built to identify it, whatever it turns out to be. If it is dyscalculia, it is diagnosed against DSM-5-TR and ICD-11 and the report authorises the exam and classroom accommodations the student is entitled to.
If the difficulty is something else, ADHD, a working-memory or processing speed weakness, a co-occurring reading difficulty or an anxiety component, that is identified, diagnosed, and carried through into the same set of accommodations and support.
The student does not leave the process with an unanswered question. They leave it with a name for the difficulty, the evidence the school and the board need, and a plan.
Many international school parents in Rome describe the same thing. Their child is bright, articulate, understands the ideas but struggles with maths. In lots of cases students have a natural talent for maths yet find it difficult to show their actual ability through some kind of problem with numbers.
In other cases a student’s natural talents may be elsewhere such as with the Arts but time and again it’s maths grades that can hold International School Students in Rome back from university options or International study routes.
Regardless of which side of the equation your child falls into, the fact that as a parent you’ve noticed something wrong tends to indicate a specific learning difficulty concerning maths. This is called Dyscalculia, and it can be identified, diagnosed and the condition can be improved more than most parents realise. It’s estimated that around 5.3% of International School students in Rome have a specific learning difficulty such as Dyscalculia.
You may have noticed the following signs of Dyscalculia in your child:
- They grasp the mathematical concept immediately, then cannot reliably carry out the calculation
- They are articulate and able in other subjects and maths is the exception
- They can explain how to solve a problem but arrive at the wrong answer
- They reach the right answer but cannot show or remember the steps they took
- Mental arithmetic does not match how sharp they obviously are
- Times tables and number facts never become automatic
- They run out of time in maths exams despite understanding the material
- Their maths mark sits below their other grades and no one can explain why
- Harder maths can be fine while basic calculation stays unreliable
- Maths has become a source of frustration and anxiety
What brings most parents to look for a dyscalculia assessment in Rome is the worry about what the situation is causing. The student is usually talented elsewhere and the maths grade is the one thing dragging the whole profile down.
In a world tilting harder every year toward data, computer science and AI, where numerical fluency sits underneath more and more of what a future career asks for, a depressed maths grade starts to look like a door quietly closing. Parents are right to take that seriously. A specific difficulty with numbers should not be the thing that narrows an otherwise able student’s options.
The good news is that this is identifiable, and once identified it is something a school can act on.
What dyscalculia actually is
Developmental dyscalculia is a specific learning difficulty in mathematics, recognised as a neurodevelopmental disorder under both DSM-5-TR and ICD-11. It is not low intelligence and it is not a gap left by poor teaching or missed school.
At its core sits a difficulty with number sense: the intuitive, almost automatic grasp of quantity that most people never have to think about. The ability to look at a small group of objects and know how many there are without counting, to sense that one number is larger than another, and to map a numeral onto the quantity it represents.
This is linked to the functioning of the intraparietal sulcus, the region of the brain most associated with processing numerical magnitude. When that foundation is weak, everything built on top of it, arithmetic fact retrieval, multi-step procedures, estimation, place value, holding numbers in working memory long enough to operate on them, becomes effortful and unreliable.
This is why a dyscalculic student can have strong verbal reasoning and strong fluid intelligence and still struggle with maths that looks far below their level. The reasoning is intact. The numerical machinery underneath it is not.
Dyscalculia affects an estimated 5.3 per cent of the population, a prevalence comparable to dyslexia. Across the international school population in Rome, that means there are students in every year group carrying an undiagnosed difficulty with numbers, and it frequently co-occurs with dyslexia, ADHD and a specific anxiety around numbers that makes the underlying difficulty worse.
Our Comprehensive Assessment
Our comprehensive psychoeducational assessment for Rome is a layered battery of gold-standard instruments, administered in English by an HCPC-registered educational psychologist. It is built to do the one thing a single screener cannot, which is to separate difficulties that look identical on the surface.
The cognitive baseline comes from the WISC-V for students under 18 or the WAIS-V for those 18 and over. Academic attainment is measured against the WIAT. The CTOPP-2 isolates the phonological processing that sits underneath dyslexia. The SNAP-IV-26, the Conners and Executive Skills self-reports and the MOXO Continuous Performance Test cover attention and executive function. The Taylor Complex Figure Test examines planning and visual working memory, the DISCO rules an autism profile in or out, and the Rotter Incomplete Sentences Blank captures the emotional impact that years of undiagnosed difficulty leave behind.
This is what allows a single assessment to distinguish dyslexia from a more general reading delay, ADHD from anxiety or from the effects of a learning difficulty masking underneath it, dyscalculia from a maths-specific attainment gap, and dysgraphia or a developmental language difficulty from the surface picture they present as. The instruments are the inputs. The diagnosis is the judgement that integrates them.
The report runs to twenty or more pages, sets its conclusions and diagnosis against DSM-5-TR and ICD-11, and finishes with recommendations tiered across the exam hall, classroom, intervention and the family.
The most common complaint an International School SENCO has about an outside report is that it delivers scores and no guidance, a diagnosis with no instructions. Our report is the opposite. It is written to be acted on the week it arrives.
What changes when it is identified
For our international students in Rome who have been struggling with maths, the change in grades after diagnosis can be exceptional. This is because after we diagnose Dyscalculia it unlocks targeted intervention strategies including things called exam accommodations which include extra time in all exams (not just maths) use of a laptop, rest breaks and use of a calculator in exams that don’t allow it.
And for an already able student, the accommodations take them to the top by giving them the opportunity to display their true knowledge at school and in exams. For a student whose maths is perhaps not their overall strong point, we find students move from failing (or near failing) to competent.
Targeted Dyscalculia intervention strategies for International School students in Rome
In the classroom, our report and diagnosis translates into specific teaching strategies such as:
- structured, multisensory maths instruction that moves from concrete to pictorial to abstract
- the use of visual supports and manipulatives
- pre-teaching of mathematical vocabulary
- problems broken into clearly sequenced steps
- reduced copying from the board
- extra processing time
- permission to show working in the way that suits the student
In exams including IB, iGCSE, A-Level and College Board, a dyscalculia diagnosis qualifies the student for access arrangements. Depending on the profile, these include:
- Extra time in all exams (not justy maths)
- Supervised rest breaks
- Separate or small-group room
- Reader, or read-aloud support for the wording of problems
- Scribe or laptop where written output is affected
- Prompter where attention and task-focus are involved
- Use of approved assistive technology
The exact arrangements granted depend on the evidence in the report and the rules of the board the student sits under, and the report from Global Education Testing Rome is written to that board’s exact framework.
Some of our parents in Rome worry that arranging accommodations is in some way giving their child an unfair edge. It is the opposite. Extra time and the rest of the arrangements do not add anything to their ability.
They remove a disadvantage the other students do not have, so that what the exam measures is the student’s understanding rather than the speed of their number processing. They allow the student to show what they know, on the same terms as everyone else.
How the assessment works
A dyscalculia diagnosis that an international school in Rome and an exam board will act on has to be a comprehensive psychoeducational assessment, conducted by a qualified educational psychologist whose reports are accepted by the major boards. Global Education Testing assessments are conducted by HCPC-registered educational psychologists, and the reports are written to meet and exceed the requirements of the International Baccalaureate, the College Board, Pearson Edexcel and Cambridge International directly.
All reports by Global Education Testing Rome carry our acceptance guarantee for IB, iGCSE, A-Level and College Board.
If there is a problem with maths, we will find it
That is the commitment. If an international school student in Rome is struggling with maths and no one yet knows why, the assessment is built to identify it, whatever it turns out to be. If it is dyscalculia, it is diagnosed against DSM-5-TR and ICD-11 and the report authorises the exam and classroom accommodations the student is entitled to.
If the difficulty is something else, ADHD, a working-memory or processing speed weakness, a co-occurring reading difficulty or an anxiety component, that is identified, diagnosed, and carried through into the same set of accommodations and support.
The student does not leave the process with an unanswered question. They leave it with a name for the difficulty, the evidence the school and the board need, and a plan.
Global Education Testing Rome
Our assessment for families in Rome is inclusive of the full evaluation battery, the formulation and report, the recommendations, and the post-assessment feedback session with the educational psychologist. The whole process takes less than 21 days from start to finish, and is conducted remotely over a secure HIPPA and GDPR video link.
And we make it effortless. We coordinate directly with your schools SENCO to collect background information such as school reports, work samples and teacher observations, so you are never stuck chasing paperwork between home and school.
Before testing, a pre-assessment consultation with the parents sets the full picture in place. After the report, a detailed debrief with the educational psychologist walks you through every finding and exactly what happens next.
We guarantee acceptance of our reports for access arrangements at iGCSE, A-Level, International Baccalaureate and College Board.
Every report is written in English, as the major exam boards require, and built to each board’s own framework so the application goes straight in. Your debrief can be delivered in whichever language you prefer, because understanding your own report should never depend on a second language.
Private & Confidential
As a private provider, Global Education Testing Rome is entirely independent. We are not connected to any school, or any government body, and nothing from the assessment reaches them unless you decide it should. The report is yours and only you choose who sees it.
For families who want a degree of separation between what the school holds and what stays private, we can also produce two versions: a school-facing report containing the diagnosis and the recommendations the SENCO needs for support and exam access arrangements, and a full parent report that keeps the clinical detail with you.
Alexander Bentley-Sutherland is the CEO of Global Education Testing, the leading provider of Learning Development Testing tailored specifically for the International and Private School community worldwide.