Pupils to sit times tables tests from 2019

[mrz]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-39053483

That's why the tests are taken at the same time in every school

Personally putting them in the curriculum is enough - they don't need a test to check. OFSTED is there to check on whether or not the school is following the curriculum?

Ok first off, I think this is a ridiculous thing. I suspect it's some kind of ego trip for someone somewhere, without any base in anything meaningful at all.

But entertaining the idea that a test must be conducted (which I don't believe), I feel the manner of it is not entirely wrong.

I'm thinking times tables are a total of 78 number facts? If to be tested on the computer, every child can surely be tested on EVERY one of those 78. You know, with instant recall and all, it should take maybe 2 minutes for each child to answer all of those questions (1.5 seconds per question). 5 minutes if we factor in typing. Maybe 10 minutes if we allow for children needing a little time to read the question and process it. That would mean over 7 seconds time per question that they should be able to answer instantly. So a 10 minutes test would suffice to cover ALL times tables, rather than needing a random selection.

Then there is no need for secrecy or worrying about the questions being leaked or doing it all at the same time. Because everyone is tested on all of them anyway!

Even if only half the 'number facts' were randomly selected for testing, what would it matter if it were 'leaked'? The child who cannot memorise all 78 of them is then told which 39 he/she needs to remember for the test, and miraculously manages to memorise them now? (In which case I'd say 'job well done' the test achieved something, at least the child now knows half of them!)

To me it makes sense to have the test at the end of Y6.

• Doesn't interfere with the teachers teaching/assessing times tables in Y4, they just get on with it as they always have done, they know who needs extra practice without needing a test to tell them so.
• It means that nobody says at the end of Y4 'right, we've done the times tables and passed the test, we can forget about it all now' but rather schools will continue practising them/reinforcing them with all children.
• At the same time, children who get the hang of their times tables a little later than most, are not put under undue pressure and can be helped to master them by Y6 without having a stamp of failure in Y4 to destroy the last shreds of their confidence.
• It doesn't matter that it is too late for interventions. If a school needs a test like this in order to target interventions in the first place, it clearly has no clue about its kids and their abilities. I wouldn't trust it to then suddenly be great at teaching!
• It's not like the phonics screening where a lack of phonics knowledge can be masked by children who read by sight, and the screening helps teachers to discover this and provide appropriate help.
• It's also not like the phonics screening in that I know that many schools don't really 'believe' in phonics, and the screening makes them teach phonics 'against their will', whereas I can't imagine that many schools don't believe in teaching times tables (though I may be wrong here, lacking experience).

https://www.mumsnet.com/Talk/primary/2858947-Question-Time-view-on-primary-schools?

I would have thought this was ridiculous but DSD is in year 5 and doesn't know her times tables. We drill them with her but EOW isn't cutting it. I do think a test is fine but should be earlier.

The times table test, if taken, should be at the end of Y4, or Y5 at the absolute latest (a little bit like the Phonics screening is done in Y1, before Reading SATs in Year 2).

That would at least have some educational point - checking that a child has some of the key building blocks in place for Maths while there is still some time to remedy the problem.

OhtoblazeswithElvira This is the DH of gingerpusscat.

Why learn the times tables? The UK NC is based upon a development of calculative skill, and so the need for times tables becomes circular. You need time tables to make progress in the NC. Given the political importance of PISA and TIMMS, and the way these tests are constructed, the NC is unlikely to change.

The alternative models of curriculum are based upon schemas, or linked concepts, that explicitly use mathematics as a language to describe the world. Such approaches draw heavily upon concrete materials and use of vernacular language. In a typical primary a single concrete model may be used for multiplication, eg arrays. However a schema based approach could have 5 or 6 different models for multiplication (groups, arrays, scaling, area, Cartesian product etc), and help students to see the analogies between these different concepts for multiplication.

In my experience a schema based approach allows the student to practice enough examples that a high level of fluency is attained, even where the student may not know each answer in a rote fashion. However there is a much deeper (or is it higher) level of thinking available to this student. The NC privileges calculation over these thinking skills.

To quote Margaret Brown, from 1981, who was largely responsible for the first NC in maths, "... a better strategy ... would be to abandon all teaching of routine skills, but to concentrate instead on building up a network of mathematical relationships (schemas), through tackling a variety of different types of problem in different contexts, with the use, where necessary, of concrete materials and calculators."

I have a masters in maths and didn't know my times tables in a rote fashion until I became a classroom teacher. I had not needed this "skill" before the classroom, even though I had worked as an industrial mathematician!

Kids need to know their times tables because if they don't recognise that 56 is 7 x 8 then they won't be able to simplify 49/56 or 49:56 or factorise 49x + 56 or x^2+15x+56. They won't spot that a rectangle of sides 7cm and 8cm is similar to a rectangle of sides 49cm and 56cm, and if they are told they are similar they will need to put in some mental effort to work out the scale factor. They will struggle with 3/7 of 56, and 3/8+2/7. Asking them to convert 59/7 to a mixed number will cause issues.

Saying that 'oh, they'll have a calculator in real life so these questions are pointless' is just embarrassing. How low do expectations have to be to justify that sort of thinking?

Wow thank you everyone
Very interesting posts!

I come at this from different angles. I am a parent of a Year 4 child (the first cohort to take the new test). I was a primary teacher for 19 years. I am now a private tutor. I am also an NCT marker.

I would much prefer a times table test at end of Year 4 or mid way through Year 5 at the latest. End of Year 6, too late.

Noblegiraffe is spot on.

"the kinds of people who didn’t need extensive math drills—i.e., math professors—are also, some of them, among the most convincing spokespeople for eschewing math drills (they’re math professors; surely they know what it takes to learn math!),

oilf.blogspot.co.uk/2014/02/who-speaks-for-reading-writing-and.html

I agree with the quite quote in the article: check.
"It is both unnecessary and un-costed and won't tell teachers or parents anything that they don't already know."

Timetables are important. Teachers know that. Let's trust them for once to do their own teaching and testing.

How do they do it online? Ds' school is 3 form entry. I don't think they have enough computer to accommodate 90+ children at once!

What are their plans for rural schools? The broadband speed is so poor in our village that it is impossible to use online resources reliably.

Plans for rural schools? That question is probably more thought than the DfE have given it.

They announce unworkable stuff to unachievable deadlines and then leave schools and teachers to mop up the ensuing chaos. Look at the mess that reforming KS2 SATs and GCSEs has caused.

It is DH of gingerpusscat again. For OhtoblazeswithElvira, and for anyone else, a soft introduction to an alternative way of thinking of maths is on Jo Boaler's site www.youcubed.org/.

For noblegiraffe I'm not quite sure how you reinterpreted the quote by Margaret Brown, but relational understanding does not lead to low standards, and the evidence, either way, for calculators is minimal at best. Look at this 50 year old video for the low achieving year 1 students.

The paper that kicked of this long debate, classified in the US as the "Math Wars", was the Skemp paper of 1976, reproduced in this blog. www.blog.republicofmath.com/richard-skemps-relational-understanding-and-instrumental-understanding/

Some have argued this is a much older debate, with reference to ancient Greeks. It seems to be a cultural choice, based upon the values you hold and the maths you believe should be privileged in the classroom.

My daughter is yr 4 and since the beginning of yr three they have been learning and been rigorously tested in all times tables under timed conditions. Our school already know who knows them and who needs to work in them. I don't have an issue with the testing but yr 6 doesn't seem to be the best given the SATS, yr 5 would seem fairer. I agree if you are computer testing it needs to be the same questions for all.

Jo Boaler is rather a contentious figure among maths teachers. Rumours she makes up her evidence don't help, but certainly some of the stuff she has written is shite.

Thing is, you can't argue 'if the curriculum were completely different you wouldn't need to learn times tables' because the curriculum is as it is and kids need them.

Meanwhile, people are claiming on twitter that 'no one' is arguing that children don't need to learn times tables......as we see on this thread, while they aren't as common as they were 20 years ago, they are still around. And there are still plenty of people arguing that 'rote learning' of any kind is bad, even if they don't specifically mention times table facts.

This view was once highly influential, and it still lingers on. I would be very surprised if it didn't have an impact on how much time is spent on learning maths facts to automaticity in many of our primary schools, and on the methods deemed appropriate. This is where the 'trust the teachers' argument breaks down; in some (many?) cases, teachers and headteachers will have been inducted into in this anti-rote learning view during their teacher training, just as trainee teachers were once (and in some cases still are) taught that phonics was bad.

http://myminimaths.co.uk/tt38.html

DD is in yr 6 and still has dodgy tables recall despite working really hard at them. Are there some kids ( no SEN ) that simply find it hard to remember them? She does now at least understand the concept, which has been hard work.

Please not Gove' s 12 and 16s...we no longer use shillings or ounces ..well perhaps ounces occasionally.

DC's school expects them to know them well enough to answer 120 questions in 8 minutes by the end of year 3.

Interestingly most children can, but very few Dads pass (they're "invited" to take part on bring your Dad to school day).

We do 50 questions in one minute

Same at ds' school.
150 written under 5 mins/ 150 online under 3 minutes here!