Junior Maths Challenge

[ItsRainingOutside]

Hi,
Any maths teachers around who know anything about this challenge which children can take in Year 8 and below? My daughter's in Year 7 and took it, getting 53% and a Bronze certificate which I think puts her in the top 40% of those who took it. She's so pleased with herself and wants to start preparing for next time but is very aware that some of the questions were well over her head. I'm sure they'll cover most of it when she moves into Year 8 but we're curious what score she'd need to achieve to get a higher level. Thanks.

According to the 2012 thresholds .

Bronze 59-70
Silver 72-85
Good 86+

The levels vary from year to year. The brone was 49 this year. I think its out of 135 (not%).

Thanks.

You can order past papers online from the UK Mathematics Trust web site. If she is very keen it might be worth it as I'm not sure regular year 8 teaching will cover it all as they are more problem solving, which gets easier the more you do it.

The thresholds are also on the website. Seems to have gone down slightly for bronze,silver and gold this year, so must be a harder paper.

Thresholds this year, I think were:
Bronze 49
Silver 63
Gold 82
Olympiad 113

Dd1 told me last night she'd got a silver. Her teacher thought that next year she should be aiming for a gold.
I assume year 8 is the oldest they do it.

Its just year 7 and 8 that does this.

Y9-11 do the Intermediate maths challenge and sixth form do the Senior maths challenge. Same thing just more difficult!

If she does really well next time, she may get invited to go through to another round. DS managed this several times - never got any further, but he loved it all. Ended up having a year's mentoring from a PhD student while he was in lower sixth, and it really helped him with uni preparation. Great scheme!

Ds did this the other week and was gutted because he thinks he had done really well and found it within his ability BUT he had answered on the question sheet and not the answer sheet and ran out of time to transfer his answers.

I told him it was good to have done this in yr 7 and not for a GCSE...not much comfort, apparently.

Just found out that at DD's school, some Year 6 students did it and the highest scoring pupil was a Year 6 boy who also made it to the Olympiad. Out of 48 students doing the challenge, 12 were awarded certificates so DD doubly pleased! I've taken a look at the paper and it's quite difficult when it has to be done with a time constraint. Congrats to anyone who even sat it, never mind achieved certificate level.

Our upper KS2 children sit the challenge. Great thing to be involved in!