Junior maths challenge 2025

Our son's state primary only let them do the JMC, not the PMC.

17 opted to take it.

Three Year 6 pupils got gold. Two Year 5 got gold - one of these got Kangaroo and the other (our son) got through to the Olympiad.

Feels like a pretty decent result (esp for a state primary) given the target age is 11-13.

One of the Croydon grammars we noticed last year actually adds up Math + English for their overall entrance score. Most schools do not do this. I can think of no better method to select mathmos.

@Jonny234 it's a super-selective grammar school. I’m sure this isn’t the only school like this but great environment to be in if your child is gifted.

Yes it's definitely the JMC. It says for Year 8 and below on the paper, and kids from our school have qualified for the Kangaroo most years. We still haven't found out our DD's results, probably as they just finished SATs yesterday.

My Y8 DD has just got best in school, again. And is through to kangeroo, a couple of marks from olympiad.
She knows she got an easier question wrong when discussing answers with her y7 sibling.

She was also best in school in Y6 in 2023 (beating all Y7 and Y8) and went through to kangeroo then too

(She's at an independent school which is both primary and secondary, and is in the times top10 secondary independant schools)

In Y7 she was really poorly with tonsilutus.... she only went into school on the day for the 1 hour to sit the exam, where she got 2nd best in school, and just missed out on kangeroo but still got gold. She was really properly unwell, and her brain was not thinking last year, but she didn't want to miss it.

Are they definitely doing the JMC rather than the PMC (P for Primary) - which is the one aimed at years 5 & 6? There is also the FMC (F for first) for lower KS2.

Wow, thats amazing given only about 1200 children in the entire country go through

@Jonny234 interesting points! We were told at some point kangaroo is maybe top 4% uk.

Given that it’s a selective sub group that take JMC, and I think 50% don’t get a certificate iirc, a bronze is a great achievement and so is every certificate. Qualifying for any rounds is just the cherry on top.

Our main aim is really for ds to enjoy maths and not be upset by pressure/marks.

Statistico Being new to all this I have done a fair bit of reading around. Your percent thresholds are about what I've seen but thinking a little deeper there is more to it than that.

From looking around there seems to be about 610k kids per year in state schools around yr7/8 plus another 40k independent, across the 2 yrs that's 1.3m. What I've seen looking around is for some schools they dont seem to bother, or only admit the top set or top 2 sets. Then you have the international effect (probably sub 10%), but probably high achieving schools which will skew the results a bit more at the top end.

Then I've seen 300k entrants quoted, sometimes 300k+, sometimes up to 400k. for simplicity lets say its 325k, and lets assume within that 325k we have 90%+ of the kids capable of gold and above.

So I reckon while your percents are right, in the wider population you can probably "about" quarter them all. I'd say if every kid in the UK took the test Gold would be somewhere around top 2%, which in itself is a great achievement. Kangaroo meanwhile sub 1%.

I can't remember how the maths exactly works but FYI there are just over 480k ways to score 17/25 and 480k ways to score 18/25....obviously not all these are used.

swimmingoggles surely that can't be right? Which school is it?

It amazes me that at DS's school 10 got through to the Olympiad and 70+ to the Kangaroo. No prep at school, they were only told the day before.

Agree there always seems quite a narrow band from Gold threshold to Kangaroo threshold (always historically less than two questions worth).
On paper Gold is 8.3% of pupils. If we guess that 300,000 take part then that's ~25,000 Golds
Then Kangaroo is ~top 10,000, or ~3.3%
Anecdotally this fits ~50 unprepared candidates in my son's school - over 10 got Gold but only 4 into Kangaroo.
(Olympiad is ~1200 so top 0.4%)
So that is telling us the scoring distribution is clearly densely populated around the Gold to Kangaroo band but this is I also realise (somewhat interestingly) connected the make-up of the mark scheme.
This year you needed 17 or 18 from 25 to get 91, a Gold. For Kangaroo score 100 could be achieved with scores 18-20/25 (made up differently).
There are many different pathways to reach a total score in this band so this will bump the frequency higher
Someone smarter than me could explain this better whereas there is only one way to score 135

By the way strong kids could totally take the IMC, as far as I can see the only additional topic required there is Pythagoras (which usually features in different ways in several questions). Yes more algebra is helpful but not essential.
Do any schools do that?

Thank you. Having 3 129s in the same yr though is amazing like I said. In the future they should all push each other to greater heights.

I think these are really fine margins and my DD could easily have dropped a Q and been a Kangaroo. On this it seems harsh, especially on the 124s. Generally this yr anymore than one question wrong and you are a Kangaroo but then those with up to 6 wrong would all be kangaroos as well. Imo there is a big difference between 19/25 and 23/25, and I feel the 25pt range from 100 to 124 is too large.

I think they should do a Super Kangaroo level, maybe top 3,000, say for those with 2-3 wrong. Pitch it at say 115+.

130 is amazing. Huge congratulations!

My son was top in the school last year (from Years 7 and 8), and I think is now joint top this year with the 2 other boys, as I haven't heard of anyone else in the school getting above 129.

Good luck to all for the Kangaroo and Olympiad x

Our son also got Q9 wrong, for the same reason.

@SpikeWithoutASoul it is very good and means she scored more than the kangaroo cut off which is a very good gold!

Best in school is best in school across both year groups. It means she got higher than all the Year 7s and Year 8s. My ds got a best in year certificate in year 7 for JMC but a year 8 child who got into the Olympiad round got an higher mark and that child got best in school.

user149799568 Thanks for that, very helpful, being new to the game I had no idea that was the way it worked. If it was the same this year I'd tell my DD to take the gamble and omit section A.

AliTheMinx Congratulations. Having 2 others in the cohort is fantastic news too, it must be a school that has high maths potential.

One reason I like my DDs 130 is I know unless someone in Yr8 got full marks she'll be Best in school. If she'd 129'ed then a 130 could have been above her.

Oh - and I know it was Question 22 that my son answered wrongly! He knew the answer and inexpicably circled the wrong one, which he has been kicking himself about. A good lesson for him to be more careful in future!

My son scored 129 - and so did 2 others in his cohort.

The threshold for Merit on the JMO last year was 20/70 while the threshold for Distinction was 38/70. Both Part A and Part B scores were included for those. The threshold for Bronze Medal was 38/60. Only Part B scores were included for medals. Someone who got 10 on Part A and 37 on Part B would have got Distinction (47/70) but not a Bronze Medal (37/60).

If they set the boundaries for Merit and Distinction to recognize the top 25% and next 40% again, I'd agree that they will be structurally 5-7 points lower than last year's, albeit out of 60 rather than out of 70. Many children who were serious about competing for a medal last year were aware that Part A didn't count there and ignored Part A completely. Because of this, I suspect that the boundaries for the medals won't be structurally much different from last year.

All good points and I agree. A lot of it is about exam approach and I'm sure when kids are checking at the end they pay more attention to the more difficult questions.

I've been saying to my DD for a while if she does want to check don't necessarily revisit the question and apply exactly the same methodology. Instead try and answer the question using a different method and see if the answer is the same. Not always possible.

I havent looked at the paper apart from Q13 which my DD answered incorrectly because she claims she misread/ misinterpreted the question. It seemed pretty easy. Perhaps one thing my DD doesnt do is just jot down the basics on scrap paper before attempting to answer.

I was never specifically taught exam technique when I was a kid and I kinda learned this iteratively and slowly. I'd guess my DD now is perhaps at the level I was at A level....partly because I'm making her think about it more.

The Olympiad will be a whole different kettle of fish in terms of approach. Double the time of her longest exam in her life to date and just 6 questions. I'm already suggesting an approach of do nothing for the first 5-10 mins apart from read all the questions, then rank them in order best to worst on gut feeling which she likes most and tackle them in that order.

With her normally reaching high percentages in maths exams I seem to have 100% got her head around the fact merit last yr was just 20/60, and bronze 38/60. This yr with the easier section A being dropped these thresholds may be as low as say 15 and 34? So like I said to her this morning, even if she got 8 marks on 3q and 3 marks on 3q she'd be there or thereabouts for a medal.

Overall though it just feels like I'm plucking random figures out of the air. I'm happy she's made it to this stage and anything else is a bonus. All I wouldn't want is the unfortunate situation like yourself that the final mark is 1-2 points off the next threshold. If merit range is indeed 15-33 say I'd be as happy with a 20 as a 32.

I'll admit though, a medal of any colour would be lovely. But my base expectation is a merit.

Just spotted this thread and had a quick read through. My daughter is in year 8 and found out yesterday that she achieved best in school. She achieved the same last year and we assumed it really meant best in year group as year 7 and 8 take part. Is that not the case? Also, her school keep it all very low key, so all she knows is that she’s ‘through to the next round’, but it seems from this thread that means she scored over a particular amount? Is that right? DH and I are both crap at maths so we’re very proud!

The UKMT may have full score analysis, but could you get it from them? I'm sure they want to know which questions were hardest/easiest but would their electronic marking deliver that data?

As an aside the BMO Markers report they give a nice graph with all the scores and frequencies. In the JMO markers report they also discuss how many attempted each question and average score.

I do think it is more common than one might think to have errors in the easier questions as kids whizz through the 'easier' ones and tend to do them intuitively & without writing much down.
DS got one 5 mark and one 6 mark question wrong.
He got Q9 wrong because he missed the fact that the second digit could be zero. Once you've made this error it may be hard to 'unsee' it. Multiple choice is not your friend here as 37 is a possible (incorrect) choice - especially if you've not written anything down.
He did not apply the algebraic approach in the solutions and I doubt many would bother.
That all assumes time to go back and check which in DS case he did have 5mins, but perhaps you don't tend to check the easier ones as much either.
Good active checking methodologies exist but I certainly didn't train myself in these until much older than 12 E.g. positively eliminate the other choices, answer question backwards, change one input and adjust answer, make an input into an extreme value - (good physics/engineering checking method that one), try a completely different method e.g algebra.

That's why getting your kids to look at the Solutions and Investigations on the JMC website rather than just Solutions is a good idea!

Out of curiosity it would be interesting to know what percent of kids got what mark at Olympiad level. 4 possible marks, 135, 130, 129, 125.

129 feels the most likely of the 4, one hard question incorrect. This must be 30%+, maybe 50%?

125 feels very unlikely, 2 easier questions incorrect. This must be sub 10%.

I don't suppose we'll ever know the answer.

Congrats and it is a fabulous result already

The Junior Kangaroo is essentially the same format as the JMC: multiple choice questions with the answers entered onto a computer-readable form. It costs very little to mark another entry, almost certainly less than £4. OTOH, JMO solutions need to be read and marked by a competent human. Many DC will put down mathematically sensible solutions but won't know the standard language to express themselves so it can take some time for a reader to work out what the underlying arguments are. And I think each solution is marked by more than one reader to improve consistency. UKMT rely on many volunteers but their resources are limited. That's why they set the limits where they do for the number of free Olympiad entries (1000-1200 for the JMO this year) and that's also why they're restricting the number of entries for the Mathematical Olympiad for Girls from next year.