This paper examines the mathematics content knowledge of graduate entry middle school mathematics pre-service teachers at the beginning (n=105; 80%) and end of a mathematics curriculum course. It was found that mathematics content knowledge at the commencement of the course was not strong. An intervention was designed to take account of content while preparing teachers to teach the material with specific pedagogical models. On a test of similar difficulty level, the marks approximately doubled, but in areas of upper secondary mathematics, significant deficits remained. Content knowledge at the end of the course was highly predictive of measures of mathematics pedagogical knowledge including how to diagnose student errors and plan learning support. The finding have implications for teacher preparation at the study institution and potentially more broadly.