Reading bus/train timetables to find departure and arrival times, calculate journey durations, and plan journeys.
Where your child meets this in real life: Planning bus journeys to school, train trips to Central or Harbour, or looking up cinema times
Each SEAG paper has 28 maths questions. Questions 29 to 50 are multiple choice with five possible answers, and questions 51 to 56 need a short written answer. With 56 questions in 60 minutes across English and maths, that is about a minute per question.
SEAGReady breaks read and use timetables into 3 steps, taught in order so each skill builds on the last.
Locate departure and arrival times in a timetable using row and column references
Extract departure and arrival times for a journey and calculate how long it takes
Choose appropriate services to meet time constraints and recognise when services don't stop at certain stations
Try three free questions from our read and use timetables course. They start easy and get harder, so you can see where your child's confidence runs out. If they manage the last one without a hint, this topic is probably secure. If not, the steps above show where to start.
Thomas is looking at the bus timetable. What time does the 09:15 bus from Central arrive in Riverside?
Andrew checks the timetable and sees the bus leaves Westfield at 10:50 and arrives in Central at 12:25. How long is the bus journey?
Charlotte is travelling from Riverside to Harbour and changes trains in Central. She must allow at least 30 minutes for the connection. What is the latest train she can take from Riverside?
This is the exact interactive worked example your child sees in SEAGReady. Step through it and watch the method build up.
Emma is looking at the bus timetable to visit her granny in Riverside.
What time does the 10:15 bus from Central arrive in Riverside?
Look at the departure column (Central)
Step 1 of 4
Emma is looking at the bus timetable to visit her granny in Riverside.
What time does the 10:15 bus from Central arrive in Riverside?
The 10:15 bus from Central arrives in Riverside at 12:30.
The key insight: Timetables work like coordinates: find the row first, then read across!
Common mix-up: Reading 10:45 from the Park column. That's the wrong column. Always check you're reading from the destination column.
These are the misconceptions we see most often in read and use timetables, including the ones our practice questions are specifically designed to catch.
Struggling with read and use timetables? The real gap is often in one of these earlier topics.
Sitting the SEAG test this November? Read our last-month revision plan, Paper 1 vs Paper 2 and test day guide.
SEAGReady finds the exact step where your child gets stuck, teaches it with worked examples like the one above, and brings it back for review so it sticks.
Free to start · no card needed