By Mark Dawes, December 2024
The Multiplication Tables Check (MTC) is carried out in June each year by all pupils in Year 4. It is an on-screen test of 25 tables questions (up to 12 x 12), with 6 seconds allowed for each one. The DfE information for parents states that tables are “essential for future success in mathematics” and that the results will “allow them to identify pupils who need additional support”.
The tests began in June 2022, which means that the first cohort to take the MTC is now in Year 7. Secondary schools can access the score for each of their pupils. This led to some obvious questions:
What correlation is there between scores on the MTC and KS2 SATS tests?
Are pupils with a lower score on their Year 4 MTC continuing to practise the tables after taking the test?
Do pupils still know their tables when they start Year 7?
Here are some thoughts, based on the data from a secondary school with an intake of just under 300 pupils, of which 87% have both MTC and KS2 SATS results.
What correlation is there between scores on the MTC and KS2 SATS tests?
There is, perhaps unsurprisingly, a fairly strong positive correlation between the scores on the two tests. (r = 0.73).
Pupils who scored 19 or above (out of 25) on the Year 4 MTC almost all achieved the expected standard in the KS2 SATS.
Of those who scored 13 or below on the MTC, almost none achieved the expected standard in the SATS.
In the corridor of uncertainty between 14 and 18 marks on the MTC, about half of the pupils achieved the expected KS2 standard.
There were 58 pupils who got full marks in the MTC and their KS2 results were fairly evenly spread across a range from 102 to 120 (the highest possible scaled score). The mean score of those with full marks in the MTC was 110.
This might suggest that it is possible to predict at the end of Year 4 (with a reasonable degree of certainty) which pupils are likely to achieve the expected standard at the end of Year 6.
Are pupils with a lower score on their Year 4 MTC continuing to practise the tables after taking the test?
Two mixed-prior-attainment groups of pupils carried out a similar multiplication tables test (onscreen, 6 seconds per question, 25 questions) early in Year 7. 31 pupils took this test and also had data from the Year 4 test. Of those, the four pupils with the lowest scores in Y4 all scored more highly in Year 7, with the two pupils whose score increased the most (by 7 marks out of 25) being those with the lowest score in Year 4.
This increase might mean they continued to work explicitly on their tables facts after taking the test, or maybe the pupils matured mathematically and continued exposure and use of the tables for other mathematical tasks helped them to recall them, or that more support was put in place for those pupils with their mathematical work.
The DfE guidance for parents that I quoted earlier says that tables are “essential for future success in mathematics” and that the results will “allow them to identify pupils who need additional support”. In my first reading of this, I assumed that the “additional support” was to help pupils to improve their times tables recall, but on re-reading it I wondered whether it also could be used as a way to identify pupils who are likely to find mathematics hard more generally, and could therefore suggest the need for more general mathematical support.
(I suspect Year 4, 5 and 6 teachers already know, however, which pupils are in need of such support and that they don’t need the MTC to tell them this!)
Here is a table showing the Year 4 and the Year 7 scores. The yellow cells highlight the same score on both tests.
Do pupils still know their tables when they start Year 7?
The mean scores of the Year 4 and the Year 7 tests differ by less than 0.2 of a mark. Those who scored full marks in Year 4 (which was the modal score for these pupils) obviously couldn’t increase their marks. There is a fairly strong positive correlation between the Year 4 and Year 7 results (r = 0.71).
Where next with this?
It will be interesting to see what use secondary schools are able to make of this data and then to explore the link between MTC results and GCSE grades (though we will need to wait until summer 2029 to get hold of this data!).
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