PUPILS in year six will have to sit a times tables test alongside their SATs from 2019.

Schools Minister Nick Gibb confirmed the plans, which were promised in the Conservative’s election manifesto.

The proposals mean children who are now in year four will be the first to take the multiplication tests when they are aged 10 or 11, at around the same time that they take their key stage two exams.

But some parents are concerned about the amount of pressure put on primary school children to achieve good grades from an early age.

And teaching unions say the scheme will take money away from schools at a time when Warrington head teachers face a funding crisis.

Speaking at a meeting of the education select committee, Mr Gibb said it is important for children to memorize times tables so they become ‘automatic’.

He said: “It is my view that there should be a multiplication check. It was in our manifesto in 2015, we think times tables are a very important part of mathematical knowledge.

“Automaticity is very important in mathematics if you are trying to perform long multiplication or long division. 

“It’s why we are introducing a multiplication check.”

Laura Mount, chair of the PTA at Appleton Thorn Primary School, said children already work hard to learn their times tables at school and a formal test could only add extra stress.

She added: “Many children do weekly times tables tests as it is but there is far too much pressure on children even now, so I do think it's too much.

“A lot of the fun of being a child is being taken away by increasing testing and lack of funding provisions in schools.”

And Shaun Everett, secretary of the Warrington branch of the National Union of Teachers, said the tests will be an added expense when schools across the town face a money crisis.

The Government’s new education funding formula is set to wipe almost a quarter of a million pounds off Warrington schools’ budgets each year.

Mr Everett said: "Times tables are of course a key core building block of children's learning but creating another formal test is surely unnecessary.

“It won't tell teachers or parents in our town anything they don't already know, but will take away from embedded learning and proper understanding of multiplication. It will be also be costly at a time when schools need more and fairer funding".

It is not yet clear how the results will be used and what form the tests will take.