Education Secretary Nicky Morgan is supporting a flawed concept.
Having supported a number of students with various disabilities through their GCSE maths, I can comprehensively support the need for numeracy in life. But learning the 'times table," often by rote, just to get through the test is not the answer.
Besides the fact that students with dyscalculia or a number of other disabilities, would find a timed test, even if it is on a computer, daunting at least and, at worst, impossible.
Also, why the heck does it stop at 12? Surely developing a working process of addition and multiplication calculation is the way to go. I have asked students who have successfully 'learnt' their tables what is 13×7 and been presented with a somewhat blank look. Painters and decorators or builders plus a host of other trades would be completely screwed if they could not get past 144.
I strongly suggest that all the politicians in the House of Commons plus all of the members of the House of Lords should be obliged,publicly, to take this computerised test before considering imposing it on the rest of us.