Anyone elses DC take the UK Junior Mathematical Challenge today?

[LynetteScavo]

If they did, I bet they actually wrote the answers on the answer paper, not the question paper like my DS.

He's supposed to be bright FFS.

It's meant to teach them to think through SOME questions rather than rushing through and guessing. They are not really the sort of questions where you might have "a bit of knowledge" as you have to solve the problem to get the mark. Some of the top performers only answer selected questions from the latter part of the paper.

I'm a secondary maths teacher. This is the UKMT website and page for the JMC (Junior Maths Challenge) in case anyone with questions finds it useful. There are links on the website to all past paper questions and answers so if anyone has children who enjoy problem solving and puzzles then this is a brilliant place to find some challenging maths problems that aren't just more sums.

Re the guessing/negative marking aspect - there are 25 questions on the paper and the first 15 are worth 5 marks each with NO negative marks. The participants are encouraged to really focus on these 15 questions and we always tell our students to guess any of these if they don't know them by the end of the time. The paper isn't designed to be 'finished' in an hour and the last 10 questions are really challenging and only to be answered if you really can work out an answer. It is worth noting that if you get all 15 right on the first section this usually gains you a silver certificate.

Re the extra time thing - students are allowed the same special exam considerations as for other exams, so if your son has say 25% extra time in exams, he should be allowed 1 hr 15 (eg the extra time) for this paper. As they aren't 'proper' exams though schools might not use this, but you could ask in future, we have certainly used it at our school for those candidates.

Hope that helps a bit!

Thanks MrsHerculePoirot, that does help.

Thanks for the link. Have had a quick look at the 2011 questions - definitely enough to make my old, tired brain hurt!

I checked .. DD wrote her answers on the answer paper