Grey Kangaroo Maths paper

[thisagain]

DD2, who is year 9 found out results of an intermediate maths challenge that she did at school a while ago (that she'd forgotten all about) and got joined top and both got 60 marks, which apparently is a silver and there was talk of a kangaroo! She was unsure what the kangaroo bit was. Having looked it up, I can see that this is an extra paper they get invited to take in school.

She isn't overly worried about taking it or not because whilst she is good at maths (top set), she is not the top of the top set and has got the best mark a bit on strategy, having answered the first 15 questions but not having attempted the next questions where you lose marks for getting them wrong. Partly because she ran out of time and probably would never have been sure enough to answer them anyway.

Anyway, the question is, having looked on-line it seems that the kangaroo paper was in March anyway, so she has missed it. Was her school late in giving out the results do you think?

To qualify for the kangaroo you need to have got a gold, and significantly past the boundary for a gold, so if she got a silver she wouldn't qualify.

Yes, does sound like it, sorry for your daughter. Might be worth letting the school know you've realised?

No, I just checked the boundary, it was 60 for the grey kangaroo.

That's very strange because the teacher put the results up in a white board with the highest marks first and there were several silvers in her class (but

I've found the boundaries now. Thanks. She's not at all worried about having missed it, in fact she had already said that she didn't really want to do it. I'm fairly sure that she wouldn't have got anything on it and this was her limit anyway and I think she might be too. She was very pleased to have got a silver though.

Yeah, she did well Maybe next year!

Yes, it is 60, how strange! Apologies for my earlier post, usually the Kangaroo qualifying score is well into the gold boundary.

The intermediate maths challenge results were emailed to schools on 18th Feb, so your school was a bit slow in giving them out!

No problem, noblegiraffe. Yes, they were late!

Someone upthread is confusing the kangaroo with the Caley - the latter' threshold was in the gold range

I can't imagine. What your school was up to - what a waste (although I suspect many children are slightly underwhelmed by the "you've done so well in your maths that you get to do more" approach!

Can I just say my DS1 is reading maths at Cambridge and never got above silver in individual maths challenge throughout his school career.

Ds got a gold last year and school didn't tell him for eight months! He would definitely have missed the next round thingy!

If your dd has done the intermediate challenge this year she will also most likely be doing it next year as well. There are past papers she could practise if that's what she likes doing. If she has never done one of these before, a silver in the intermediate and qualifying for the Grey Kangaroo is really good.
Dd loves doing these as, whereas the maths curriculum is fairly prescriptive, these require more puzzle solving and working out what maths to use. You have to take the results with a pinch of salt. Dd does quite a few of them and sometimes does well and other times does badly. If she enjoys doing them, all well and good. If not, it is, as pointed out above, not that important.