The truth about times table tests
In February the Government announced plans to introduce a new national test of numeracy by testing times tables of Year 4 students. Cue howls of protests from the usual suspects, i.e. the teaching unions and the liberal arts mafia. The reasons they all put forward for opposing this idea were the usual ones. 1) There is already too much testing in schools. 2) Lots of people who are good at maths never knew or learnt their times tables. 3) There are other ways of calculating 9x7 etc. 4) No-one needs to know this stuff anyway. And as usual, all these reasons are totally false, erroneous and spurious. Excuse 1) was proffered b y Nick Brook, deputy general secretary of the National Association of Head Teachers , but it ca n be easily dismissed by any teacher working in any school or FE college because they know that all good teaching requires assessment. Every learning outcome in every lesson should be assessed, or tested. So adding an extra test like the times table test shoul