Extra/super curricular maths at Senior School

[Nightingale987]

Wondering if anyone has any suggestions of extra/super curricular maths opportunities for DD who is very able mathematician in first few years of secondary school? She already takes part in UKMT Challenges and Parallel Maths which she really enjoys. Any other suggestions of activities/ workshops/ camps/ work experience etc either online or in person that are accessible to children at Independent Schools? A lot of things run by Universities are specifically for State School pupils. Anything perhaps to encourage girls who are interested in studying Maths at A Level / University? Not looking for books or courses or anything very expensive. We’re based in London. Thanks very much for any suggestions.

Also see: https://compos.web.ox.ac.uk/

https://www.maths.ox.ac.uk/outreach/oxford-online-maths-club

That may be the case for some pupils but I was specifically mentioning the outreach activities which are open to non-sixth formers.

I'm not sure if this would be available to her but I did a statistics GCSE in Y9 started Y8, it was held as an after-school club. I found it really interesting because it looked a lot at real world application of maths alongside statistics methods and techniques. I did a huge piece of coursework analysing potential outcomes and odds for euro 96, based on previous performance etc!

DS did his GCSE maths in yr 7. We came to learn that the general consensus amongst teachers is it’s better to broaden and enrich the child’s knowledge rather than accelerate their progression through exams.

OP might be worth looking at the Stats GCSE curriculum to see if it doesn’t overlap too much with the regular GCSE. DS’s school suggested he take it in yr 11 but by that time he wasn’t interested as he’d gone well past that level just teaching himself.

I was passionate about maths as a child. If I had a DC like yours, and I don’t, I would see if she was interested in the history of Mathematics, it is riveting and would help her see maths in different ways.
Equally there are fascinating ideas in maths that are not, as far as I’m aware in the school curriculum, such as game theory.
Enjoy

Thank you for sharing these, my son is really pleased!

Selcuk Oyzurt has good playlists on YouTube on game theory and advanced game theory.

Good point about reading around the subject, even at a young age.

UKMT, NRICH and some of the maths schools publish reading lists for different age groups.

There’s quite a bit of crossover between the lists, Fermat’s Last Theorem and books by Simon Singh seem to be almost universally recommended.