Team Maths Challenge

Also the team challenge is not the JMC that all can do. In our area 2 year 8 and 2 year 9 make up the team. Our school did a prelim test in class similar to team challenge questions and then the top 2 got in the team. Son is usually top but was joint 2nd with a number of others and the 2nd was pulled from the hat (not my son). School came 3rd - hooray. He'll still do JMC at end of April and it won't prevent him doing maths a level if he wants to. Just ask what selection process they used and accept what they tell you.

No... I will take that partly back. If your DS is amenable, I would mention at next Parents Eve that he was disappointed about not being chosen and what could he do to increase his odds next time.

Only if your DS is fully on board with making this a constructive opportunity to improve; but some teens would be mortified that you brought it up.

What's the point of mentioning it at parents' eve if the Team Math Challenges are done for this year (I think so?) and he'll probably have a totally different teacher for yr9?

If it's that important to your DS then the time to bring this up again is start of yr9 with math teacher he has then. To say how disappointed he was and how keen he still is.

Finally it was actually DS that wants me to ask the teacher at parents evening why he wasn't chosen

I would encourage him to ask the teacher himself.

I've read the thread and I think I would mention it at parents' evening, if I was in your shoes. Not to make a big deal of it, but just to say he was disappointed that he didn't get to go and ask if there are other extra-curricular maths things that he could get involved in. No harm in asking and it may help you understand how teachers are viewing his skills.

We don't do any of the "top sets" stuff as far as I can see. My DSs had some sort of test at primary for something and were measured at 3 or 4 years above their age. School reports have always been good but other than class knowledge refresher type tests, they don't seem to do much formal testing until their first exams in 4th year (roughly year 11 I think) I really have no clear idea how they are doing against their peers - they aren't streamed or anything.

When I read threads that are mainly related to English schools, it seems much more transparent.

"Just to clear up the mystery concerning 2 top sets.."

It's clear. Kind of. I expect the timetable is responsible for some of the other troublesome bits e.g. there is a lot of split-teaching for Y7, although I can't figure out why I don't recall any split-teaching in my day.

The reason I asked is that once upon a time I had a "choice" of trying to get DD trained well enough to get into a quite shiny super-selective (disturbingly lengthy commutes) or the closest comp. One of the many considerations for the comp was around ermm.. safety in numbers in maths i.e. would there be enough children around her level to keep her company and perhaps provoke a bit of credible differentiation?

Beyond some children from the same primary school I don't know anything about the other top-set, but parallel top sets can clearly break up a quite small number of children at the top end of the ability range who might benefit from being together in a system that isn't good at accommodating ability extremes.

In DD's top set there are three, with the two others being similarly whizzy boys. The differentiation for them isn't brilliant, but it could be a lot worse and they all seem to enjoy working and amicably competing with each other. We were also very lucky because some subtly poisonous competitive girls from the primary have ended up in the other half of the current divide. If this school ever suggests a boy/girl divide experiment you'll find me chained to the school gates waving a placard.

It may well be that his teacher wants to expand the confidence of other children in the classroom.

I wouldn't worry about it from the point of his uni application. They really won't be looking at what he did in ks3 and if he is a good mathematician he will have a lot more to put on it as he gets closer to the time.

It sounds like your main gripe is that his talent isnt being recognised. You won't really have time to talk about that in a parents evening. I would use that appointment to listen to what the teacher has to say and then ask to book a follow up phone conversation or meeting, preferably without your ds, on another occasion.

Oh no! What happened then?

I amagine the 2 top sets are because the year is split in 2 halves for ease of timetabling-dd1's school is the same in years 7-8. Or it could be a boy/girl divide, which is what they've tried in year 9 (not been a success in case you're interested, and they're changing it back next year)

DD1 is top at maths and has done several of the maths team challenges. I can think of several reasons why they might not have chosen him.

1. They wanted 1 boy/1 girl, and the other boy is better. DD1 certainly gains from being a girl who is good at maths when it comes to being picked for such things.

1. He may be best on what he has done, but may not be so good at working out how to do something he hasn't been told how to do. My dsis could get 100% on any maths she had been told how to do, but wouldn't have a clue if she hadn't been told. I could take a question and work out from first principals how to do it. Dsis found this both irritating (I was 3 years younger) and helpful (when she needed me to explain her homework)

1. They may know that he doesn't compliment the other mathematician as well. Dd1's group that does the team maths challenge, she and another lad work very well together. They have to have a third though, and there are a couple that work very well with them, and there's another who really doesn't work well with them although he's as able, he's not as good a team player. And there's another lad who is very capable but very similar to another one and not quite as good. So having him on the team adds less.

1. The maths challenge and the team maths challenge are different. One who does well in one doesn't necessarily do well in the other. Certainly that's true of dd1's year-and I remember it being true when I was at school too.

1. It's possible they asked who could/wanted to do it. That happened with dd1's group. One lad's mum asked why he wasn't chosen and was told (in front of child) that he'd replied to being asked something slightly less polite than "I wouldn't do it if you paid me". However his dm had thought he was disappointed not to be picked.

We have a bit of an issue in our school about them never getting time away from lessons for anything. Other local schools do an activity week, they don't, other schools have charity dress down, they don't. They have lost their home-ec teacher so now get an extra period of Maths, an Art teacher is leaving so they think they are getting extra science. Getting decent exam results seem to be the main focus.

I honestly thought they needed an extra invigilator and therefore could only get one or two so thanks for the info on that.

Increasingly the classes sometimes seem to have no teacher at all - there have been 3 occasions - (2 for one son and 1 for the other) - over the last couple of weeks that they have had no teacher in class that my children have made me aware off - they weren't complaining btw, in DS1s case it was becasue I asked what they had first thing on Friday to see if they would get out for the Eclipse. He said he had English and would be watching a video as they had no teacher. DS2 told me because his class got in trouble for having a carry on.

Well on the bright side your DS got to do individual in Y7. Although the maths dept. talk about UKMT on our state comp school website there's no sign of it happening for DD's current Y7. I think these little peripheral things matter, so I might try twisting the HoD's arm for future Y7s.

I also couldn't guess who is 'top' in her top-set because of assessment ceilings e.g. the recent serious one for this term covered L5 - L7 and the three whizzy children either got the maximum score or some random glitch put them just below.

Maths Challenge can be done in a normal classroom as long as the pupils can be spaced out a bit; one person supervises the room and makes a seating plan. It doesn't need a specialist invigilator, just someone keeping an eye out for cheating, as you would during a class test.
Blue, I doubt if your son was left out to give a teacher an easy day without his questions; the teachers spend most of the time with teams from other schools.
Hope he gets a chance next time, it's a great day.

Sorry, didn't it mean it that way, it sounds like he is far from average, we are just suffering from the opposite issue. Neither is great tbh. He is probably about the same or brighter than my boys but mine would have no chance of getting on the team by academic selection so randomly being picked from a hat would be their only chance.

My children are at a state comp too (Scotland). The maths challenge doesn't seem to be that challenging. Having said that,the school has a pupil who scored 100% in an exam (the only one in the country to do so) which he sat 2 years early. Now that's being top amongst your peers.

The junior competition is always on when they have Prelims on which use all the bigger spaces available so usually they only have a classroom or two with appropriate supervision available. It is sad. The school is very academic so out of 6 classes in my elder son's year, at least 4 of them are capable of doing well in the challenge. If they can only fit 30 in then that's a lot of disappointed students. I suppose the randomness of it is probably the fairest.

Going a bit tangential to say that's a terribly sad excuse by OneMagnum's school! They must have enough room for everyone to do e.g. maths GCSE, so why isn't there room for the JMC/etc?

Two top sets because the year is split into two halves who have maths at different times in order to fit the timetable. If only half of y8 are having maths at one time, then that frees up teachers to teach a particular option block of sixth form, for example.