All children must learn times tables by age of 9

EVERY child must learn their times tables by the age of nine in a crackdown on teaching standards, say ministers.

Pupils will then face new online tests to examine their ability.

Thousands of primary school children will next month start taking the assessments in which they will be expected to demonstrate they know up to their 12 times tables.

The move means no school will be able to get away with failing to teach youngsters basic multiplication skills.

A trial of the test, announced today, will be taken by around 7,250 eight and nine-year-olds in Year 4 across 290 schools.

It is hoped to make them mandatory by the summer of 2020.

Nick Gibb, the schools minister, said the tests would help end the scandal of standards in the UK falling behind other countries.

He hoped it would also put an end to the fashion among some adults for boasting about being ‘bad at maths’. He said: ‘In other countries around the world it is taken for granted that young people will learn their tables as early as possible in their primary school career. They need to be properly equipped for mathematics at secondary school.’

Chris McGovern, of the Campaign for Real Education, said: ‘In the 1950s times tables were central to our primary schools. It is a shock that we have reached 2018, and after decades of education reform, we now need tests to check that teachers are definitely teaching the times tables properly.

‘Times tables are on the national curriculum, but we know that some teachers are not teaching them well enough. It’s obvious that many are not placing enough importance on them. The proof of this is that too many youngsters are leaving school innumerate.’

The new tests will last no longer than five minutes. Mr Gibb said they were designed to avoid causing additional stress to children and teachers. They will also help identify pupils who are falling behind. Results will not be published and will not count towards Government performance tables.

The 12 times tables were added to the national curriculum in 2014 following reforms by former education secretary Michael Gove. Previously, children only had to know up to their ten times tables by the end of primary school.

However, there has been no standardised way of forcing schools to teach them to the required standard until now.

The focus on times tables is part of a wider schools roll-out of the back-to-basics ‘maths mastery’ approach widely practised in China and Singapore.

Critics have previously blamed years of slipping standards in Britain on Labour, which favoured soft, ‘child-centred’ approaches.

Chris Wilkins, head teacher at the St Ninian Catholic Federation in Carlisle, said the tests would be a ‘really useful benchmark’. But Nick Brook of school leaders’ union NAHT called the idea ‘hugely disappointing’.

He added: ‘A pupil’s primary school years are already cluttered with tests and checks.’