Primary Teacher! What’s Your Strategy for the MTC?
“I test my class every week and they still don’t know their tables!”
This is something many teachers say and it seems like this frustration has filtered upwards as the Government has decided to introduce the Multiplication Tables Check, (or ‘MTC’ … they love a good abbreviation!)
So… what is the MTC and why should you care about it?
Essentially the MTC is an online test that is coming in 2020 for Year Four students, with a voluntary pilot taking place from 10-28th June 2019. Teachers will have a 3-week window in June to administer the test, which will comprise of 25 randomly generated questions across all the tables, but with an emphasis on 6,7,8,9 & 12… the guidance says that ‘2’ and ‘10’ might make an appearance in a test, but not to the same degree.
The test can be administered to the class as individuals, in small groups or by the whole class at once, possibly depending on the availability of IT equipment, and each question will have six seconds allocated for an answer. The questions will all be in the form of, for example, 4 x 6 = _, with no testing of corresponding division facts or deriving answers using place value.
At the moment there is no set standard students need to achieve in the test, and each school will get the marks out of 25 for each of their children. School level results will be available to OFSTED.
So why now?
The Government has said that knowing the multiplication tables is “essential for future success in maths” and whilst most wouldn’t disagree with this, learning tables ‘parrot fashion’ to achieve rapid recall in an online test, does not demonstrate that children have the knowledge, understanding and application of tables to form that solid foundation for maths success.
If you are going to put time and energy into making sure your students get their tables right for the MTC, then you might as well teach them to do multiplication well, through practising and applying the learning in a way that makes it stick and makes sure the facts can be used in other areas of maths.
That being said, 10 ideas to help for you to get prepared for the MTC have been compiled and you can read those here.