Anyone elses DC take the UK Junior Mathematical Challenge today?

I checked .. DD wrote her answers on the answer paper

Thanks MrsHerculePoirot, that does help.

Thanks for the link. Have had a quick look at the 2011 questions - definitely enough to make my old, tired brain hurt!

I'm a secondary maths teacher. This is the UKMT website and page for the JMC (Junior Maths Challenge) in case anyone with questions finds it useful. There are links on the website to all past paper questions and answers so if anyone has children who enjoy problem solving and puzzles then this is a brilliant place to find some challenging maths problems that aren't just more sums.

Re the guessing/negative marking aspect - there are 25 questions on the paper and the first 15 are worth 5 marks each with NO negative marks. The participants are encouraged to really focus on these 15 questions and we always tell our students to guess any of these if they don't know them by the end of the time. The paper isn't designed to be 'finished' in an hour and the last 10 questions are really challenging and only to be answered if you really can work out an answer. It is worth noting that if you get all 15 right on the first section this usually gains you a silver certificate.

Re the extra time thing - students are allowed the same special exam considerations as for other exams, so if your son has say 25% extra time in exams, he should be allowed 1 hr 15 (eg the extra time) for this paper. As they aren't 'proper' exams though schools might not use this, but you could ask in future, we have certainly used it at our school for those candidates.

Hope that helps a bit!

It's meant to teach them to think through SOME questions rather than rushing through and guessing. They are not really the sort of questions where you might have "a bit of knowledge" as you have to solve the problem to get the mark. Some of the top performers only answer selected questions from the latter part of the paper.

Hmm, just checked on the UKMT website and it says that they deduct 1 mark for every incorrect answer on Q 16-20 and 2 marks for every incorrect answer on Q21-25......

Not sure what I would have advised my DS in this situation. By not attempting the last 3 questions, he's missed out on a possible 18 marks but if had tried and got them wrong, he would have lost 6 marks from what he'd got already

Will have to wait and see! Any idea how long they have to wait for a result?

I didn't know about the deducting marks for wrong answers! I wonder what it'll mean for DS - he said most of the paper was dead easy, but there were some trickier questions. He thought he'd had a good stab at how to go about them and, though confident, wasn't sure.

DS1 did it last Friday too.
He said it was easy but then in the next breath, he said he didn't put answers in for the last 3 questions because he didn't have a clue and didn't want to lose marks for wrong answers..... Is that how it works?

OP - Agree with your DH - better now than on a GCSE paper I suppose! DS1 actually came home a week or so ago with a past paper and answer sheet so he knew the format, so that helped. My DS's problem would have been neatness - he's SO messy. Apparently it's read by an optical mark reader and on his practice papers, he kept making a mark vaguely in the area of the box he was suppose to colour but not right on top! Whether or not he managed to actually colour the box on the day, who knows??

DD did it and now I am thinking I should ask her where she wrote her answers!

She was thrilled to be picked, because she missed double French .

My DD did the challenge last Friday - she knew that they take marks off for wrong answers - didn't tell me until she'd done the challenge. The joys of senior school.

My DD did the challenge on Friday - knew that it was better not to guess and get it wrong as they take marks away for wrong answers! Didn't even know she was doing it........ho hum the joy of senior school!

DD's had to be postponed, I think, because some of them were on a trip.

The boys' school just enter students in yr8, so neither of mine did it this year.

Friday was the first round.
But some schools give students a practise paper a couple of weeks before, then enter just the top 20 scorers or whatever for the actual thing.

I think it is the first round, the teacher was explaining about what they do if they get through, at Parent's Evening.

I thought this was the first round too - DS1 in Y8 did it at school.

DS did the Intermediate and Junior since Y3 and the first year he did it he put all the answers in the wrong place i.e. circled A instead of colouring in the box! So he got 0 for the junior and a gold for the Intermediate! lol!

DD1 (pretty bright) failed for four years on the trot to read the instructions about not guessing at questions as they take marks off for wrong answers. Finally she managed on the Senior paper .

DD2 did the JMC on Friday with a broken wrist (the teacher marked the answers after she'd done the working out with her wrong hand), so no idea how she managed. The papers are HARD though.

I thought this one was the first round? DD2 certainly didn't do any previous papers this year?

DS did it on Friday.

I'm a bit annoyed with the people who run this as they do not give extra time to dyslexics. DS got a high mark in the earlier paper - but I am left wondering how he should have done had he not been disadvantaged by denying him the additional time he needs to read the questions in the first place!

Yes, they get the results through fairly promptly - within a month certainly - because the Junior Olympiad (next round) is in the middle of June.

Well done all yr7s who are doing it.
Oops to Lynette's ds, but as others have said it's a good learning opportunity.

UKMT papers are so different from anything they will have done before. Most "good" mathematicians are used at primary to getting 99-100% in tests. Most schools only enter the top maths sets, yet still 60% of the entrants score less than 33%, because the test is so hard!

Oh dear. My DS did his on Friday, I think he wrote the answer on the right page but he is a law unto himself so who knows.

DD is supposed to be doing it this week - will give her the heads-up!