The Multiplication Tables Check

National Curriculum: expected secure by the end of Year 4.

What it is

The Multiplication Tables Check is a statutory assessment for Year 4 children in state schools in England, taken on screen in June. It asks 25 multiplication questions from the 2 to 12 times tables — no division — with 6 seconds for each question. There is no pass mark: the school receives a score out of 25 for each child.

The 6-second limit is the part that makes it a recall test. Six seconds is enough time to read the question and type an answer that comes from memory; it is usually not enough to count up a table. A child who works out 7 × 8 by counting in eights knows something real, but the check marks the question wrong, because what it measures is recall — the answer arriving without working.

Questions come more often from the 6, 7, 8, 9 and 12 times tables, which the Standards and Testing Agency judged the most difficult. Those tables sit at the end of a chain: 2, 5 and 10 are learned in Year 2, then 3, 4 and 8 in Year 3, and the rest lean on the earlier ones — schools often teach 6 × 8 by doubling 3 × 8, and 12 × 8 by adding 10 × 8 and 2 × 8. A Year 4 child struggling with the check often has an earlier gap, in the Year 3 tables that many of the harder facts are built from.

When children learn it

The check runs in June of Year 4 (ages 8 to 9) in state schools in England; Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland do not run it. It covers what the National Curriculum expects by then: the 2, 5 and 10 times tables from Year 2, the 3, 4 and 8 times tables from Year 3, and all tables to 12 × 12 by the end of Year 4.

What it looks like when it goes wrong

These patterns come up again and again in children's answers on this skill. Each one points at a specific missing idea, not carelessness.

• Correct answers that arrive too slowly. Asked 7 × 8 at the table, they reach 56 by counting up in eights. Deriving an answer is the right method at an earlier stage, but the count usually cannot finish inside 6 seconds, so a table that looks fine in untimed practice comes out as a run of misses on screen.
• A fact known one way round only. 3 × 8 comes back instantly; 8 × 3 gets a pause, or a different answer. The pair has been stored as two separate facts and only one of them stuck. The check asks facts either way round, so half-stored pairs cost marks.
• A neighbouring multiple. 9 × 6 answered as 48 or 60 — the answer to 8 × 6 or 10 × 6. The skip count lost or gained a whole group on the way up, which is the standard failure of counting under time pressure.

How to help at home

• Get a fact correct without a clock before adding one — timed practice on a fact that is still being counted produces guessing. Once the answer comes from memory, short timed rounds make the recall reliable at check speed.
• Spend most of the practice time on the 6, 7, 8, 9 and 12 times tables. The check asks them most often.
• Ask each fact both ways round — 7 × 8, then 8 × 7 — until both come back at the same speed. A check form never asks both, so you cannot tell which way round a fact will come up.
• Practise entering answers on screen, on a keyboard number pad or a touchscreen — whichever the school uses. A child can know 56 and still lose the question to slow answer entry.