A note on times tables, since everyone asks

Times tables are drilled hard in primary schools here, and parents ask me about them constantly, so here is what I actually think.

Children need to know them quickly, and quickly means recall, not calculation. But drilling a child who does not yet understand what multiplication is produces a child who can chant the whole table at speed and cannot tell you what six times four would be useful for.

So: understand it with objects, then learn the facts by heart, in that order. Ten minutes a day beats an hour on Sunday. Do the ones they already know first, so that it feels like something they can do.

And a child who is punished for getting them wrong learns the tables more slowly, not faster. That is not sentiment, it is just what happens.