Primary principal reminds parents of maths importance for high school

Teachers - including celebrity maths sensation Eddie Woo - have warned students must memorise their timetables for one simple reason.

A primary school principal has warned children to ­embrace old fashioned memorisation and learn their times tables by heart before they enter high school.

Belmore North Public School principal Janet Burling’s advice has the backing of celebrity maths teacher Eddie Woo, who said rote learning was a precursor to mastering trickier numerical concepts.

Earlier this month Ms Burling told parents to make sure their children had memorised them because they would fall behind in high school.

Students from Belmore North Public School, Makayla Van Der Walle, Kelsey Guirguis, Ashita Shraya, Wajahath Ali Khan and Erik Crichton practice their times tables. Picture: Brett Costello

“I recently contacted a high school teacher from Belmore Boys High School who said it is critically important that students in Year 7 know their times tables,” she said.

“Not knowing these simple number facts prevents students from making the progress they need in high school.

“It is never too early to start so please encourage your children to practice at home and memorise their times tables.”

Speaking to The Daily Telegraph on Tuesday, Ms Burling explained the advent of the internet, smartphones and technology had meant committing factual information to memory seemed less important but said it was still vitally important for learning.

“Memorising times tables assists in developing students’ memory “muscle” and also facilitates their ability to quickly and fluently use mental computation strategies,” she said.

“Knowing their times tables reduces students’ cognitive load and frees up their working memory enabling them to acquire higher level concepts.”

Maths teacher Eddie Woo with Parramatta Public School students Hawwa Faslu Rahman and Dhwani Raghesh earlier this year. Picture: Adam Yip

Celebrity maths teacher Eddie Woo backed Ms Burling’s call to memorise times table, saying they were essential for mastering mathematical concepts covered in high school.

“Being able to recall facts really quickly is a foundation for deeper thinking,” he said.

“When students encounter fractions and decimals and percentages which require times tables, they don’t have to go back and say, ‘wait, what is four times seven again’?”.

When quizzed by The Daily Telegraph what 16 times 18 was, he conceded he didn’t know off the top of his head.

“That is a really great question, you have just asked me a question which I don’t know, that I haven’t memorised.

“But I can tell you the answer really quickly because I have memorised what 16 times 16 is, which is 256 and then I can add on a couple of 16s onto that which gives me 288.

“That flexible thinking is what we do want — but I couldn’t do that without some baseline memorisation.”

NSW Mathematics Association President Karen McDaid backed the move, saying basic maths skills were vital to common sense.

“While we have these calculators in our back pockets, we need to be able to recognise when something is instantly wrong,” she said.

Belmore North Year six student Ashita Shraya, 11, said she enjoyed doing mathematics after she mastered her times tables by the time she was in Year 3.

“I enjoy doing them, you can apply them to real life,” she said.

“It is pretty fun, if you know it inside and out, it makes maths really easy.”