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Your child reaches for the phone calculator to work out 63 minus 28. Is that a problem? It depends on when the calculator comes out. The research is more reassuring than many parents expect, with one warning about sustained use around Grade 4.
Is it bad if a child uses a calculator for simple sums?
Not automatically. A 1986 meta-analysis by Ray Hembree and Donald Dessart combined the findings of 79 research reports on calculators in school maths. Used alongside ordinary teaching, calculators improved the average student's basic paper-and-pencil skills at every grade level except one. Students who used them also had better attitudes towards maths and a better view of themselves as maths learners.
The exception was Grade 4, where sustained calculator use appeared to hinder the development of basic skills in average students, according to the same meta-analysis. Grade 4 corresponds roughly to Class 4 in India, when many children are still building quick recall of basic facts.
So the question is whether the calculator is standing in for facts your child has not yet made automatic.
Why does mental arithmetic still matter?
Facts you can recall quickly leave room in your head for the actual problem. In a 2013 brain-imaging study in the Journal of Neuroscience, Gavin Price, Michèle Mazzocco and Daniel Ansari scanned high school seniors while they did single-digit sums. Students who relied more on brain regions linked to retrieving arithmetic facts from memory scored higher on a standard maths test, the PSAT. Students who relied more on a region used for processing quantities scored lower. The authors concluded that mental arithmetic fluency plays a fundamental role in learning higher-level maths. This is a correlation, not proof that drills raise scores.
Many children in India have not reached that fluency yet. ASER 2024, a rural household survey of 649,491 children, found that 33.7% of Class 3 children could at least do a two-digit subtraction with borrowing. In the same survey, 30.7% of Class 5 children could do a three-digit by one-digit division, and 45.8% of Class 8 children reached the survey's basic arithmetic level. ASER describes these as the highest levels in over a decade, and they still leave most children short of the basics.
The habit matters later too. Older students who meet exams without calculators need quick, reliable arithmetic; our guide to calculation shortcuts for JEE when there is no calculator shows the techniques that help.
How do you set up calculator-free practice at home?
Aim for short, daily, low-pressure practice rather than a ban. Here is a two-week plan:
Agree the rule together: estimate first, calculator second. Nothing is confiscated.
Practise five minutes a day: ten sums at your child's current level, on paper or spoken aloud. Our five-minute mental maths routine for Class 3 children has ready-made ideas.
Ask for the strategy, not just the answer: “How did you get that?” turns one sum into a small lesson.
Let the calculator check: after the mental answer, your child may verify it. A mismatch becomes a puzzle, not a mark against them.
Add speed only later: in week two, if accuracy is steady, time the set and try to beat their own time, never a sibling's.
How can a child work out 63 − 28 without a calculator?
Instead of borrowing column by column, round and adjust. 28 is 2 less than 30, so work out 63 − 30 = 33. You took away 2 too many, so add them back: 33 + 2 = 35. Check by adding: 35 + 28 = 63.
If a mental answer keeps going wrong in the same way, the method is usually the issue, not effort. Our post on how parents can respond to silly mistakes in maths helps here. For older students, the Fermi Problem Library has worked problems with a step-by-step solver that explains the reasoning rather than printing an answer, so the wrong step is easier to find.
When is a calculator fine?
Checking an answer already worked out by hand or in the head.
Messy real-world numbers, such as comparing unit prices with decimals.
Exploring patterns, such as what happens when you divide 1 by 3, 7 or 9.
Higher classes where the lesson is about a concept and the arithmetic is a side job, if the teacher allows it.
Not as a replacement for tables and single-digit facts in the primary years; the Hembree and Dessart review found sustained use held back basic skills at Grade 4.
If your child can say roughly what the answer should be before pressing the keys, the calculator is saving time. If they cannot, it is doing the thinking.
Start tonight with five sums and one question: roughly how big should the answer be?
