UK junior maths challenge - kangaroo?

[Fjea]

DDs (13) school has not made much of a thing of the UK maths challenge. They didn’t tell them they were going to do it, and when they got the results their maths teacher just handed out the certificates with no comment. DD got a gold certificate and best in school. Her friend said that meant she would be going through to true ‘next round’ and I’ve been trying to understand what that means.

So far I’ve worked out that the ‘next round’ is likely to be the kangaroo, but I have no idea how likely it is that she is within the threshold to be invited. And whether the school would be bothered about her doing it if she has. Should I investigate further or if she hasn’t heard does that mean nothing else is happening?

Also interested to know… bumping for you.

Another bump for me and @JumanjiReturns …

Hi there, the Kangaroo round is for the top 10000 performers or something like that, so it depends on how others in the country did.
When the school got the scores back, they would be aware of whether a pupil qualified for the kangaroo, so I would ask.
In my experience, gold certificates usually do mean a qualification - congrats to your DD. In any case, a gold is excellent.

Just had a quick look at the scores this year - 84 points was a gold and 92 was a qualification this time. So if she knows her score, that would tell you.
But like I say, the school will know; we get a clear spreadsheet with it all on when we get the results.

The thresholds this year were:

Gold 84+, Silver 66+, Bronze 52+, Junior Kangaroo 92+ (UK only), Junior Mathematical Olympiad 120+

So she could have got a gold certificate but not qualified for the Kangaroo. The school will know, it will have been on the spreadsheet with the results. I assume they would have told her if she had qualified!

Thanks, she doesn’t know her score. I’d guess that she hadn’t qualified if the school hadn’t told her, but they have been rubbish about the whole thing so not sure really. When would the kangaroo round be happening?

Mid June I think.

14th June

DDs friend got gold but not a high enough score to qualify for the kangaroo. The qualifying score varies from year to year. My dd was delighted with her silver as she had no clue what some of it was talking about 🤣

My Dd also got a gold and we haven’t heard about the kangaroo. She claims the school doesn’t know the scores. Sounds like that is wrong. Am debating emailing the school - should have done it earlier as it is now half term.

DS did this challenge. My DC school choose kids (presumably from top set) seemingly at random, to do it. DD has reluctantly done it 3 times and twice got bronze and the other time got nothing.

DS did for the first time this year and got through to the next round. About 8 of the year 7s got gold, 3 went to Kangaroo round including DS , (which is on 14th June, presumably at school) and 1 went to Olympiad which is apparently higher....

Yep, I should have asked earlier too. Only thought about it now because another thread mentioned the challenge. Ah well, DD doesn’t seem that fussed. Probably best just to forget about it.

Update: DD has been invited to the Kangaroo round 😀 she has come back from school with the details today. Only one in the school to qualify apparently.

Good luck to her! Well done!

Great news! The style of the questions is a little bit different from the standard challenge- if she googles UKMT kangaroo she should find some practice materials with solutions.

Thanks! The school have given her a practice test to look at, so I was thinking there’d probably be more to find somewhere. Though they sprung the other test on them with no practice so not sure I’ll push too much preparation on her.