Pupils To Sit Times Tables Check From 2019

[mikey4444]

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

Am I to understand, from this astonishing news, that children are NOT tested on their times tables now ?

[fiction-factory]

Yes, an enjoyable question zebo. I got 60 for the area (oddly no units mentioned), but after doing the product of gradients = -1 and y=mx +c stuff I went round the houses as I did some extra Pythag that I later realised wasn't needed.

[jno]

ichkeria, I'm assuming, perhaps rashly, that people have calculators already out. Most of them seem to have phones in their hands 24/7. The one on my desktop comes up in half a second.

However, I was indeed talking about larger numbers - not multiplying pi by the distance to the moon necessarily, but sums like 11 x 16, where even if you know your tables you'll still take 30 seconds to multiply 11 x 8 and double the result in your head. I can do that, but no quicker than I can do it with a calculator. That's where the value of rote learning does appear - or, in my opinion, doesn't.

My own recollection is that rote learning of tables took ages, maybe a quarter of an hour every day or two. Whether that's cost-effective in terms of the time you'll save later in life is one question; another is whether it would be more useful to use that quarter-hour for something else, maths or otherwise.