Junior maths challenge 2025

Very surprised at the narrow bands towards the top end. There could be just 10pts between a 32pt merit and a 42pt gold medal.

Kinda surprised the Merit level is so high. The last 3 years has been quite consistent at 30ish pts (30,30,32) between the Merit and Gold but this year it's only 20pts!

JMO results have just been released! Boundaries:

Gold - 42+
Silver - 39+
Bronze - 36+
Distinction - 33+
Merit - 22+

DS9’s school has an inset day so we won’t discover how he did til tomorrow

Our son is also at a state school. You have to get the school to apply. It doesn’t cost much. Find a sympathetic teacher and try to get them onside. Our school was skeptical at first but now they have lots of parents wanting to put their kids in for it

I have never heard of these things before. DS is really good at maths, in a bog-standard comp. Are they private school thing or can anyone enter?

One more thing I've been thinking. I think the Olympiad level is a bit of a red herring imo.

AFAIK most schools take the JMC, some overseas too. Weaker schools just have their top kids sitting the exam. So at kangaroo level 10k from 300k and 3% ish is in reality probably more like 10k from 1m standardised or 1%.

To be honest I think this alone is a great level. Kangaroos should be somewhere around top grade GCSE and A level. Going higher than this feels like overkill. OK some will major in maths in the future but how many will it really be? a small percentage. I'd prefer if this effort was spread elsewhere across other subjects rather than there being specific prep to try and get the JMO count higher as seems to occur at the top boys schools.

Therefore I think what's probably most important is trying get a child into a school with a strong kangaroo cohort which you know doesnt prep for the JMC.

Nightingale987

I agree with everything you say. It does look like top boys school have practice clubs, and also the aggregation will help.... a lot of smart boys in the same place helping each other. Some of the numbers are insane, 41 at WUS, 25 at St Pauls boys, then is is Hamptons/ Wilsons or something which has 20+ ish too. SPGS never seems to publish results for JMC, might this be because they don't want comparisons with the higher achieving boys school?

But for all schools they should publicise it in my opinion, it raises the profile. I do agree there is perhaps some under reporting for girls schools.

G&L have had 2, 5 and 5 Olympiads in the last 3 years. The 2 and 5 are all yr8's and the wording on the other 5 isnt conclusive but sounds like at least 3 were year 8's. (2023)

I think if I concluded that out of all Olympiads overall 3/4 are boys and 80% are Yr8's or vice versa then even at that level it feels prudent from what I've seen anecdotally. At that just 5% of Olympiads would be Yr 7 girls. Not many.

Congratulations to your daughter @Jonny234 on getting into the JMO, that is a great achievement.
I have also been interested in the gender split and would love to see the actual data.
From looking online boys schools often seem to have clubs where they are practicing for maths challenges. Competition is encouraged and expectations are high which will boost numbers of awards year on year. St Paul’s Girls had posted that they had 14 girls get through to the Intermediate Olympiad one year - that is likely to be one of the highest number of female entrants in the country - but about half the number of those from top performing boys schools qualifying for the Junior Maths Olympiad - although maybe more girls would qualify from SPGS for JMO? (No information about that seems to be posted).
I just don’t think, sadly, despite there clearly being able female maths students that maths is promoted as much for girls in schools or celebrated in the same way. This may mean actually that achievements of girls are slightly under-reported. It is very difficult to know without actual data being available.

My son’s school gave out the Kangaroo results yesterday.

JMO results should be out soon hopefully before the school closes. Otherwise have to wait until September.

user149799568 Thanks for that.

Since I started learning about all this I've looked around a fair bit. Thinking back to another post, I believe of yours showing over representation of boys at this level....thank you. It didnt feel real at first and I wonder how that mapped to the JMO rather than the senior example you gave.

I started by thinking ok it's maybe 60%-70% boys who are Olympiads but I think I'm way off with that. Looking around it must be 4:1, 5:1, 6:1 ratio type of thing, there are so many in comparison to girls and at some top schools like WUS and St Pauls there are dozens of them every year. No mixed or girls school seem to come close.

Then there is the year split, again it looks similar ratio's as above for Yr8 vs the other years is far more prevalent.

So I'm starting to think, and although I'll probably never know the answer that I'm pretty sure my Yr7 DD's achievement is very rare. Very proud of her even before I know the JMO result.

DC said that the school gave out Kangaroo certificates today. Others at the school did take the JMO.

Hopefully the JMO results might be on their way soon. This message has now appeared on UKMT X account in response to a question as to whether the JMO has been marked:
The papers have been marked and the results are being prepared and finalised. Schools will be notified as soon as the results are available on their account. Team UKMT.

I don’t think UKMT would hold back the Kangaroo results. It will be an overhead for them to go back and sort both again.

My son’s school didn’t give the Kangaroo results yet. Probably they might be waiting for the JMO results to come through and then share all at once.

We are waiting for JMO results too.

I asked the original question because my DD's teacher claimed today that the kangaroo results hadn't come back yet. Seemed a bit weird????

I was trying to figure out why not?

Well done to your DD

Whilst I don’t think UKMT hold back the Kangaroo results, the school may choose to wait until the Olympiad results are returned so they can give out all results to pupils at the same time. I am certainly aware of this happening.

I think the JK questions are definitely still 'a little' harder (based on my own kid doing past papers in both) but in fact you raise an interesting point because a few years ago you absolutely needed to use algebra for last few of JK but definitely less so now.
Maybe this is inline with your comment that 23-25 on JMC are also more accessible recently which I would also agree with.

My DD was delighted with her silver kangeroo score

(not sure of her score, she was only told silver, I'll ask her teacher tomorrow)

She was only 1 question off olympiad, and after discussing maths challenge with her y7 sibling on the day of the test, she realised she had lost one of the "easier" questions..... If she'd have got that easy one she would have been in olympiad

UKMT said online they had sent out all Kangeroo results @Jonny234 so I don’t think they hold them back.

Just a random question if anybody knows.

Does anybody know if a school has Kangaroo's and Olympiads if UKMT wait till the results of the latter before sending through the results for both to the school? Or do they do it separately?

Is anyone's DC in a school with Olympiads who have got their Kangaroo result already?

To make the contests more inclusive and engaging by giving more students a realistic chance of a more substantial reward than a certificate, and to provide more exposure to challenging math for some interested students.

The JMO has been around for something like 30 years. This year's is only the tenth edition of the Junior Kangaroo. Before 2015, the vast majority of UK schools did not have a single qualifier for the only follow on round (JMO), which limited engagement from both students and teachers.

Increasing engagement has been a focus of the UKMT in recent years, particularly at the junior level.

• They introduced the Junior Kangaroo in 2015 and have steadily increased the number of Kangaroo qualifiers from "several thousand" in 2015 to "around... 10,000" this year. In contrast, they've held the number of JMO qualifiers steady with the exception of 2021 (Covid).
• They dropped negative marking for errors on the JMC in 2020, the Covid year, to reduce the stress on some students. Interestingly, they never used negative marking on the Junior Kangaroo.
• They increased the percentage of certificates awarded on the JMC from the top 40% to the top 50% in 2022.
• They increased the percentage of certificates awarded on the Junior Kangaroo from the top 25% (Merit) to the top 60% this year.

The changes listed above are objective. Subjectively, I believe that they've also made questions 23-25 on the JMC easier since Covid, allowing more children to experience the pleasure of higher scores.

They're trying to make math more "fun" for the kids.

The first five questions of the Junior Kangaroo are clearly more difficult than the first five questions of the JMC in an absolute sense but I doubt any Kangaroo qualifiers will notice the difference; they'll get all five of either. But I don't believe the last five questions of the Kangaroo are more difficult than the last five of the JMC. There's no need for them to be. Again, none of the students sitting the Junior Kangaroo achieved full marks on the JMC, unless some opted not to sit the JMO, so the students should find the same level of difficulty challenging enough.

@user149799568 if it isn’t more difficult what is the point of having a follow on round at all?

It's not clear to me that the Junior Kangaroo is, on average, any more difficult than the JMC. It is true that, typically, the 75th percentile Junior Kangaroo score is about two questions lower than the corresponding score those students had on the JMC. However, at least part of this is due to the nature of the selection process. Kangaroo qualifiers include a disproportionately large number of students who had good days on the JMC and a disproportionately small number of students who had bad days. The mean score that Kangaroo qualifiers achieve on the JMC is higher than the score that you'd expect if the same students took a similar exam again.

Also, there's no obvious benefit for UKMT to make the Kangaroo any more difficult than the JMC. By definition, Kangaroo participants who did not qualify for the JMO scored at most 23/25 on the JMC this year, and lower in most previous years. What need is there to increase the difficulty for students who weren't already maxed out?

Not all schools will support discretionary entries for the follow-on rounds. AFAIK, you need to register through a school for the UKMT competitions and, if your school doesn't want to allow discretionary entries, you're out of luck.

Thats a fantastic turnaround and congrats, it blows my correlation argument clean out of the water.

I can kinda rationalise it now from my experience with DD. She won't always be guaranteed top or well clear of the field in school but when it gets to a higher level that is when she shines. Like Statistico alluded to perhaps kids get more focus when things get harder rather than just casually breezing over easier questions without the necessary due care and attention. The other element to it is self satisfaction, I know my DD wouldnt necessarily care if she got an easy question right or wrong but she feels good if she knows it's a hard question she's got right.

Nightingale987 I presume they've been marked. I did wonder if the pic was an old one but doesn't seem to be. In 2023 they marked at the wkend and the results came out on the following Tues so I suppose it could be imminent. That said they do say "coming weeks".

Like you I'm private but summer breakup is a little later so I hope the results come back in time.

I just wonder if the thresholds will shock with the new format. I'm hoping they drop but get a hunch they'll probably be about the same despite there being 10 marks less.

You've come to a very similar conclusion with a different method!

I was basing my crude 'seems like JK slides about 5 questions harder along difficulty scale' on my DC's results having previously completed many of the available JMC and JK past papers and I was going to suggest 5-7 but that was too complicated to write down.
I think JK Q1 is like Q5-7 of JMC but I also think nothing on JK is particular any harder than equivalent to Q30 on JMC was my point from this purely subjective viewpoint.

Don't forget tho the JK score distribution may be quite non-normally distributed Vs the JMC distribution so one may need to be very careful using mean. It would be interested to learn median for both these populations!