All primary school-aged children are expected to know their times tables up to 12 x 12 by heart and the expectation is that this is mastered by the end of Year 4, therefore the Department for Education (DfE) introduced a Multiplication Tables Check (MTC) for all pupils in Year 4.
The Multiplication Tables Check is an online digital assessment. The times tables test will be timed, with the assessment lasting approximately 5 minutes in total.
Key test information:
- The checks became compulsory in 2020.
- The results of the test are not published publicly, they’re not going to end up on a league table and they’re not to worry about. There’s no pass or fail, there’s just a score out of 25 marks. They’re not to be used to compare children, they’re for us to reflect on so that we make the most of our provision. We’re actually looking forward to seeing how well we do.
- The checks consist of 25 questions. The questions will only be multiplication and they will go up to 12× There’s nothing novel about the questions and they don’t require problem solving so there’s nothing to trip them up. Given that the questions are relatively simple, age appropriate and the length of the check, which is carried out on a computer, is no more than 5 minutes, we don’t think the checks are onerous