Last Wednesday (26th April) was a very exciting day for students and teachers of the Maths Department. During Period 5, the Junior Maths Challenge was hosted in the Green Room. The Junior Maths Challenge is an annual, national competition by UKMT (UK Mathematics Trust) for 11-13 year old students. The participants, all students in Year 7, were invited by the Maths Department to participate. We were then given a multiple - choice answer sheet with our name on, and then a question booklet with the 25 questions we had to complete which were different levels of challenging.

After school on Fridays, the few weeks prior to the challenge, practise sessions were hosted where we could use questions from previous challenges from a few years ago to prepare for the event. The questions were very hard, but I liked the challenge! There were 25 questions in an hour, so we had over two minutes per question. The first 15 questions were worth 5 marks each, and 16-25 were worth 6 marks each. Points were not deducted for incorrect answers. During the challenge, we had to deeply shade in the circle of our choice, (A,B,C,D or E). Our answer papers would then be scanned, and these results would be marked by a ‘dumb machine’ as it is called on the UKMT website.  

The top 8.3% of participants are awarded a Gold Certificate, the participants in the top 16.6%-8.3% are awarded a Silver Certificate and those in 50% to 16.6% are awarded with a Bronze Certificate. In short, the top 50% of participants are awarded with Bronze, Silver and Gold Certificates in a 3:2:1 ratio. In addition, there are awards: Best of Year and Best of School, which are rewarded with a badge to go with the certificates. In later stages of the competition, approximately 1,200 of the highest scoring students will be invited to join the Junior Olympiad and another over 10,000 high-scoring students will be invited to the Junior Kangaroo event. I hope I am one of them!

UKMT (United Kingdom Maths Trust) is a registered charity that aims to develop children’s mathematical interests with nationwide challenges and competitions. It creates an extra layer of challenge to our maths curriculum and creates a sense of competition amongst Year 7 students. It was established in 1996 and is run by over 400 volunteers. Their most-popular challenges receive over 700,000 entries. They also run summer camps and residential trips that help children develop their interests in maths and STEM more broadly. To accompany this, they also have a mentoring scheme. 

I think that this has been a wonderful highlight of Year 7 and a great opportunity that I would like to thank the UKMT for!