Pupils to learn their tables earlier

Children will be expected to have learnt their times tables by the age of eight as a result of a shake-up in the way maths and English are taught in primary schools.

Ministers have brought the deadline for learning them forward by a year after this year's disappointing results in national curriculum tests for 11-year-olds.

Senior advisers say that under the existing plan to teach times tables by the age of nine, children were given too little time to master more advanced maths at primary school. This, it is argued, could be responsible for the stagnation in primary test results, which saw 76 per cent of pupils reach the required standard in maths by the age of 11 this summer, just 1 per cent more than last year and way short of the target of 85 per cent set by ministers for 2006.

The change is one of a number to the way literacy and numeracy will be taught in primary schools published in a document released yesterday. There will also be stricter controls over the use of calculators, with more emphasis on mental arithmetic,andcompulsory synthetic phonics lessons to improve reading standards. For the second year running, only 79 per cent of youngsters reached the required standard in English at 11, again way behind the Government's target.