Children will now have to know their 12 times tables by the age of nine, but it's not about rote learning, it's about revelling in the profusion of patterns, writes Rob Eastaway, maths writer and dad.

In this method the smaller number is partitioned (broken down into tens and units). \({27}\) is broken down into \({10}\), \({10}\) and \({7}\). The method of partitioning into tens, simplifies the ...