What can't memorizing times tables do?

This is the honest version of what times table practice can achieve — and what it can't. Knowing the limits of fluency practice is what makes it possible to use that practice effectively.

What the research says

A 2025 perspective article published by the Chartered College of Teaching — authored by researchers at Loughborough University and the University of Nottingham — makes a point that most times table apps and resources don’t: fluent recall of multiplication facts does not automatically improve children’s multiplicative reasoning or problem-solving.

Their finding: children who can retrieve 4×3 instantly don’t necessarily know how to use that fact — they may not recognize it in a real-world context (“I have 4 boxes of 3 apples — do I need multiplication here?”), may not be able to represent it visually, and may not be able to connect it to related facts without being explicitly taught those connections.

The researchers also note a structural risk: when times table practice is separated from broader math learning (done at home, in a dedicated fluency app, disconnected from classwork), children miss opportunities to see where those facts connect to the rest of their mathematical understanding. They end up with a tool they don’t always know how to use.

This is not an argument against memorization — the authors explicitly state that “quick recall of multiplication facts frees up valuable cognitive resources” for more complex tasks. Fluency is necessary. It just isn’t sufficient.

What this means in practice

Practicing times tables has a ceiling: it produces recall, not understanding. For most children who will go on to meet that ceiling anyway, this isn’t a problem — they’ll develop the connections through classroom instruction. For children who struggle with tables, the risk is that concentrated fluency practice crowds out the conceptual understanding they particularly need.

Try this

• Celebrate fast recall, but also ask: can your child tell you what 4×7 means in a real situation?
• If your child’s school uses times tables explicitly in word problems or reasoning, that’s more valuable than pure drill — it builds both.
• Don’t measure a practice program purely by speed scores. Can your child apply what they know, or just recall it in isolation?

Last reviewed: 2026-08-01