Times Tables Practice & MTC Test

About the Times Tables Practice & MTC Test

Practise the times tables so they stick: choose any tables from 1 to 20, answer at your own pace, and every fact you miss comes back a few questions later. Facts you find hard are asked more often next time, and a fact-by-fact heatmap shows which ones are secure, which are getting there and which still need work. Questions can be plain multiplication (7 × 8 = ?), missing numbers (7 × ? = 56) or division (56 ÷ 7 = ?).

Timed rounds give you one, two, three or five minutes to answer as many as you can. MTC check is a practice run of the multiplication tables check that year 4 pupils in England take: 25 questions from the 2 to 12 tables, 6 seconds each, a 3-second pause between them, and every form built to the rules the Standards and Testing Agency publishes for the real check.

Common uses

• Ten minutes a day on the tables a child finds hardest, with each miss repeated while it is still fresh.
• Getting used to the 6-second pace before the year 4 multiplication tables check.
• A one-minute class or family challenge: how many right answers before the time runs out?
• Revising division facts and missing-number questions from the same tables.
• Older pupils and adults brushing up the 13 to 20 times tables for mental arithmetic.

About the multiplication tables check

The multiplication tables check (MTC) is a statutory on-screen check for year 4 pupils in England, taken during a three-week window in June. Each pupil gets one of several equivalent forms of 25 questions worth one mark each, all written n1 × n2 =. The 6 seconds start as soon as a question appears; pressing Enter moves on early, and when the time runs out, the digits on screen are taken as the answer. A 3-second pause follows each question. Only digits register, and schools receive each pupil’s score out of 25: there is no pass mark.

These rules come from the Standards and Testing Agency’s multiplication tables check assessment framework. This page uses them for its practice forms; it is not the official check or its practice area, and its screens do not copy the official ones.

How each practice check form is built

Questions come from the 121 facts of the 2 to 12 times tables (2 × 2 up to 12 × 12); the 1 times table is not used. The first number names the table, and each form keeps to the framework’s limits:

• the 6, 7, 8, 9 and 12 tables: 2 to 4 questions each (they are the hardest, so they get the most);
• the 3, 4, 5 and 11 tables: 1 to 3 questions each;
• the 2 and 10 tables: at most 2 questions each;
• the 2, 5 and 10 tables together (taught at key stage 1): 3 to 7 questions, so 18 to 22 come from the key stage 2 tables;
• no question appears twice, and a question and its reversal (3 × 8 and 8 × 3) never appear in the same form;
• the second numbers stay within one of the same limits, so no number turns up far more often than the others.

A new form is drawn each time you start, and the questions come in no particular order of difficulty.

How your progress is worked out

Every answer is recorded against its fact, so 56 ÷ 7 counts for 7 × 8. A fact is secure when your last two answers to it were right within 4 seconds — a margin inside the check’s 6 seconds. It needs work when your last answer was wrong or missing, or when you got it right less than half the time over three or more tries. Anything in between is getting there.

With Choose facts that need work more often switched on, a fact that needs work is about six times as likely to be picked as a secure one, and one you have not tried yet or are getting there with about three times as likely. Within a round, no fact is asked a second time before every chosen fact has been asked once, apart from re-asks of missed facts.

Fewer facts than it looks

7 × 8 and 8 × 7 are the same fact, so the 144 squares of the 1 to 12 heatmap hold only 78 different facts — and the 1s, 2s, 5s, 10s and 11s take care of many of them. The hard ones can be built from easy ones: 6 × 7 is 5 × 7 + 7 = 42, and 9 × 7 is 10 × 7 − 7 = 63. For printable tables, patterns and a chart, see the multiplication table generator; for practice sheets, the math worksheet generator.

Limitations

• MTC check mode follows the published rules but is a practice simulation, not the official check.
• For extra time, use Practice with 10 or 15 seconds per question, or no limit.
• Tables go from 1 to 20 and multipliers from 1 to 20; there are no zero, negative or decimal facts.
• Progress is kept in this browser only: it does not follow you to another device or browser, and clearing the site’s data removes it.
• When you switch to another tab or app, the clock pauses and that question starts again with its full time.

Privacy

Everything runs in your browser. Your answers and your progress on each fact are kept only in this browser’s storage, so the heatmap is still there next time, and are never sent anywhere. Clear progress removes them.