The Maths Wall

It happened during a recent parent-teacher interview.

I sat across from my child's teacher wearing my usual balancing act as an educator, a parent, and a mother. At some point, the conversation turned to maths, and I asked how my child was progressing with their times tables.

The teacher smiled warmly and explained that the focus was less on memorisation and more on flexible strategies and number sense.

I understood exactly what she meant. We want children to think deeply about mathematics. We want them to understand concepts rather than simply repeat procedures. We want them to explain their thinking, make connections, and solve problems creatively.

Those things matter.

Yet I left the meeting with a lingering concern.

At school, I regularly watch students struggle when mathematics becomes more demanding.

At home, I watch my own children wrestle with concepts that should be manageable but feel overwhelming because the foundations underneath them aren't yet automatic.

The more I observe, the more I find myself returning to a simple belief:

Understanding and memorisation are not enemies.

Children need both.

Somewhere along the way, memorisation developed a poor reputation.

Many parents hear the phrase rote learning and immediately picture children mindlessly reciting facts with little understanding. And they're right to be cautious.

Understanding should always come first.

A child should understand that 7 × 8 represents seven groups of eight. They should understand what multiplication means and why it works.

Yet at some point, that understanding needs to become automatic recall.

A child shouldn't have to rebuild 7 × 8 from scratch every single time they encounter it.

Not because speed is the goal, but because mental energy is limited.

Every bit of effort spent reconstructing basic facts is effort unavailable for learning something new. When every calculation requires conscious thought, there is very little space left for the actual problem in front of them.

Understanding gives meaning to mathematics.

Recall gives efficiency to mathematics.

The most successful learners develop both.

In education we often talk about something called the maths wall.

I've seen it countless times;

The topic appears on the board. ‘Fractions.’ Before the lesson has even begun, I can see it happen.

Shoulders tense.

Faces drop.

Eyes look away.

Some students have already decided they are going to fail.

The interesting thing is that they aren't usually afraid of fractions themselves. They're afraid of everything fractions represent.

Multiplication. Division. Factors. Multiples. All the number relationships hiding underneath the surface of the problem.

When those foundations aren't secure, students don't see one question. They see twenty.

Their minds race ahead.

To answer this, I'll need to find a common denominator. To find a common denominator, I'll need my multiplication facts. What if I don't know them? What if I get it wrong? What if everyone else understands? What if I can't do it?

Before a pencil even touches the page, they've already exhausted themselves.

Some students become disruptive. Some stare at a blank worksheet. Some put their heads down. Some ask to leave the room. Some suddenly feel sick.

I've even seen students miss school around mathematics lessons because the anxiety felt so overwhelming.

Not because they were unwilling.

Not because they weren't capable.

But because the mountain seemed impossibly high before they had even taken the first step.

One of the most rewarding experiences of my teaching career came when we stopped focusing on the mountain and started focusing on preparation.

In our classroom, we called it ‘pre-season.’

Just like athletes don't walk onto a field and immediately play a grand final, we weren't going to jump straight into complex mathematics. We prepared. We practised. We strengthened the foundations.

Long before students were expected to answer fraction questions, we worked on the skills sitting underneath them. The multiplication facts. The division facts. The number relationships. The small building blocks that make bigger mathematics possible.

We normalised preparation.

We celebrated preparation.

And slowly, something began to change.

The panic started to ease. Students stopped freezing when a new topic appeared. The wall that had once seemed enormous began to shrink.

Not because the mathematics became easier, but because the students became more prepared.

When I think back on those moments, I don't actually remember many of the lessons.

I don't remember the daily tasks.

I don't remember the assessment tasks.

What I remember are the students.

I remember the child who finally realised they could do something they had spent years believing was beyond them. The student who walked into the room convinced they were bad at maths and slowly began changing that story. Classmates celebrating each other's breakthroughs. Students cheering when a peer finally understood something that had been frustrating them for weeks. Students openly saying, ‘I know I can do this.’

And I remember the collective joy of those uh-huh moments.

Not the moment a student got the answer right.

The moment they understood.

The moment confusion gave way to clarity.

The moment they realised they were capable.

Those moments weren't created by memorisation alone. And they weren't created by understanding alone. They happened when understanding and automaticity finally met.

As both a parent and an educator, I've come to believe that we sometimes create a false choice.

We talk as though children must either understand mathematics or memorise mathematics.

Yet real confidence comes from having both.

Children deserve rich mathematical conversations. They deserve opportunities to reason, explain, investigate, and explore.

They also deserve strong foundations.

They deserve the confidence that comes from knowing basic facts so well that they no longer have to think about them.

Because when those foundations are secure, something remarkable happens.

Students stop worrying about the mechanics.

They start engaging with the mathematics itself.

And once a child experiences that feeling of capability - once they realise they can climb the wall that once seemed impossible - everything changes.