Times Tables & the Year 4 Multiplication Tables Check: A Parent's Guide

The Multiplication Tables Check became statutory in summer 2022, following several pilot years. It is now a statutory requirement for all Year 4 pupils in state-funded maintained schools, special schools, academies and free schools in England. Its stated purpose — set out in the STA administration guidance — is to determine whether pupils can recall their times tables fluently, and to help schools identify which children need additional support with multiplication.

It is explicitly not designed to label children, rank them against each other, or generate league-table data for schools. The DfE has confirmed that school-level MTC results are not published in primary school performance tables. The government considered using MTC scores as a progress baseline measure for school accountability and rejected the idea due to statistical issues that made it unsuitable. Individual results are visible to Ofsted inspectors via internal reporting tools, but the check carries no headline accountability weight.

The national curriculum expectation — set in 2014 and still in force — is that by the end of Year 4, pupils should “recall multiplication and division facts for multiplication tables up to 12×12”. This covers both multiplication and the related division facts, with precision and fluency. The MTC is the check that confirms whether that expectation has been met.

The check is administered on a school device — a laptop, desktop or tablet. Pupils first work through three unscored practice questions to get used to the interface, then the 25 scored questions begin. Each question appears on screen, and the pupil has six seconds to type or click their answer using an on-screen number pad. There is a three-second pause between each question. The whole thing is over in under five minutes.

The six-second limit is deliberate. According to the MTC Assessment Framework, six seconds was selected as the time that allows a child to recall and input a known fact, but not enough time to count up to the answer using skip-counting or finger-counting. The check is measuring automatic recall, not derived calculation — and the timer is the mechanism that enforces that distinction.

Which tables appear most often?

The 25 questions are not drawn equally from each table. The MTC Assessment Framework specifies minimum and maximum question counts per table. The 2 and 10 times tables receive at most two questions each. The 3, 4, 5, and 11 tables receive between one and three. The 6, 7, 8, 9, and 12 times tables receive between two and four questions each — making them the most heavily weighted. No more than seven questions in total come from the 2, 5, and 10 tables combined. This means a child who only knows the “easy” tables comfortably will not do as well as the raw question count might suggest.

The DfE's Primary Assessments: Future Dates guidance page confirms that schools must administer the MTC within a two-week period beginning Monday 7 June 2027. For context, the 2026 window ran Monday 1 June to Friday 12 June (with a back-up week of 15–19 June), and the 2025 window ran Monday 2 June to Friday 13 June.

Each school chooses its own day within the window. Some run it early in the first week; others schedule it later to allow more preparation time. Your Year 4 teacher will communicate the date in advance — it is worth asking in the spring term if you have not heard.

Reporting MTC results to parents is a statutory requirement. The KS2 Assessment and Reporting Arrangements use the word “must”: headteachers must report to parents, by the end of the summer term, either the child's MTC score, the reason the child did not participate, or the reason no result was received. The STA's own information for parents states plainly: “Your child's teacher will share your child's score with you.”

In practice, schools receive results from the DfE by late June and typically communicate them in the end-of-year report or in a brief letter alongside it. The score is a number out of 25. There is no grade, no descriptor attached, and — as emphasised above — no pass mark. The score is presented purely as information to support the child's learning going into Year 5.

If your child did not take the check — because of a disapplication decision or because they were absent — the headteacher must still contact you to explain why. You should not receive nothing at all.

Since the check became statutory in summer 2022, national scores have risen consistently every year. There is no official “expected score” set by government, but the DfE publishes national attainment statistics each autumn via Explore Education Statistics, and they provide a useful benchmark:

In 2024/25, the national average was 21.0 out of 25, with 37% of Year 4 pupils scoring full marks. The participation rate was 96% across all four years. In practical terms: a score of 20 or above puts a child at or above the national average; a score of 25 places them in the top 37% nationally — just over a third of Year 4 pupils achieved full marks.

The 2024/25 data also showed a 2.4-point gap between disadvantaged pupils (average 19.3) and non-disadvantaged pupils (average 21.7), and a small gap between boys (21.2) and girls (20.7). London had the highest regional average at 21.7; the South East and East of England were among the lowest at approximately 20.7. These breakdowns are published by DfE each autumn.

When you receive your child's score, the most useful question is not “how does this compare with the national average?” but “which tables does my child not know automatically, and what can we do about it over the summer?” A score of 18 with a clear plan is more useful than a score of 23 with no follow-through.

The MTC is designed to be as inclusive as possible. Schools can enable a range of access arrangements via the MTC service before the check window. The seven available arrangements, as set out in the STA administration guidance, are:

• Colour contrast — pupils can select preferred text and background colour combinations at the start of the check.
• Font size — enlarged text option available.
• Pause (“Next”) button — adds a manual button so a pupil controls when the next question appears; a 30-minute overall time limit applies when this arrangement is used.
• Remove on-screen number pad — for pupils who find the pad distracting or prefer a physical keyboard.
• Input assistance — a staff member can enter the pupil's dictated or pointed answer.
• Audio version — the built-in screen reader reads questions aloud. Note that third-party screen readers are not compatible with the timed check element.
• Audible time alert — an audio cue for visually impaired pupils indicates when time for each answer is running out.

One arrangement that is explicitly not available is additional time per question. The guidance is clear that extra time per question would undermine the fluent recall element that the check is designed to assess — six seconds is the fixed limit for all pupils, including those using access arrangements.

Headteachers may decide a pupil should not take the check — a decision known as disapplication — if the pupil is unable to participate even with all available access arrangements, or is working below the national curriculum expectation for Year 2 in multiplication. In 2024/25, 49% of pupils with Education, Health and Care plans did not take the check, compared with 5% of those on SEN support; the most common single reason among EHC pupils was working below the level of the assessment, at 41%. When a pupil is disapplied, the school must record the reason on the MTC service and inform parents — you will not simply receive nothing at all.

The national curriculum is explicit that tables learned by the end of Year 4 are not finished in Year 4 — in Years 5 and 6, pupils are expected to “apply all the multiplication tables and related division facts frequently, commit them to memory and use them confidently to make larger calculations.” What I see in lessons is that children who arrive in Year 5 with truly automatic recall are faster, calmer, and less error-prone across a wide range of topics.

Here is where fluent times tables have the biggest downstream impact:

• Working memory and harder problems. The NCETM identifies automaticity as transformative because it “frees up working memory, allowing pupils to focus cognitive resources on higher-order problem-solving.” When a child has to work out 7×8 during a long division problem, that mental effort is borrowed from the task of tracking the algorithm itself — mistakes follow.
• Fractions. Simplifying fractions, finding common denominators and converting between improper fractions and mixed numbers all require instant recognition of factors and multiples — which is, at root, times table knowledge.
• The KS2 SATs arithmetic paper. The Year 6 arithmetic paper rewards rapid mental calculation, long multiplication and long division — all of which depend on instant fact recall. Children who count during the paper lose time and accumulate errors. Our KS2 SATs guide covers the full Year 6 picture.
• Ratio and proportion. KS2 ratio and scaling questions require pupils to recognise multiplicative relationships — 3 litres is to 4 litres as what is to 12? — at a glance.
• KS3 algebra. Expanding brackets (3(x + 4) = 3x + 12), solving equations and factorising expressions all require confident factor recognition. A student who hesitates at 3×4 in an algebraic context will find KS3 maths significantly harder than it needs to be.

The Education Endowment Foundation's guidance on improving maths at Key Stages 2 and 3 recommends ensuring pupils can recall multiplication facts quickly and efficiently, precisely because “those who are unable to do this may have difficulty with harder maths later in school.”

The families I tutor who make the most progress with times tables are not the ones who buy the most workbooks. They are the ones who practise in the right way. Here is the method I recommend, broken into steps:

You do not need to spend anything to practise for the Multiplication Tables Check. Here are the tools I recommend to families, in the order I tend to suggest them:

Most Year 4 children do not need a tutor to prepare for the Multiplication Tables Check — a consistent home routine with the free tools above is usually enough. Where one-to-one support genuinely helps is when a child has a wider gap in number fluency: not just particular tables, but a lack of confidence with mental arithmetic that is beginning to show up in other areas of maths too.

In those cases, a few focused sessions can make a significant difference: not by drilling tables in isolation, but by building the connected understanding of multiplication, division, and number relationships that makes tables stick and pays off across Years 5 and 6. The MTC is the near-term goal; secure foundations for KS2 SATs is the bigger one.

I offer primary and KS2 maths tuition across Oxford — including Kidlington, Bicester, Didcot, Witney, Abingdon and surrounding villages, with online sessions on request. I start every new student with a free diagnostic lesson to see exactly where the gaps are, then build a focused, friendly plan around those gaps. If times tables are part of a broader picture of maths support, I can cover that too — from number fluency right the way through to GCSE and A-level maths for older siblings.