UKMT Junior Maths Challenge

[shank2]

Did your y/y8 son /daughter sit the Maths challenge today and if they did -did they find it easy/hard

How does everyone know their results? Do they come on email?

My DD doesn't know her results. She will wait for the school to tell her. Last year she didn't know anything specific, just that she got a "bronze medal." She didn't actually bring a physical medal home, so I think it was just a figurative thing, just a sort of "honourable mention."

She was hoping to do better this year. She has really liked her maths teacher this year and feels like she is making progress, so getting a "silver" would really reinforce that the hard work was paying off. But it sounds like she found it tougher this time. That's how it goes.

It gets mentioned in the school newsletter what they achieve in it at dd's school.

The school gets emailed a spreadsheet of how meant questions each student answered, how many they left blank, how many were ambiguous (e.g. badly rubbed out, 2 answers coloured), and their score. Then which certificate they got, whether they qualify for the kangaroo or Olympiad, whether they were the best in their year and whether they were best in the school. The school also gets sent a bunch of blank certificates and they fill in the names and hand out. All electronic, very fast turnaround.

yr8 DS did it Thursday. Said he couldn't do the last 3 Qs. Said there was a math challenge in merely understanding the scoring system, too.

Glad people found it harder than last year, as DD also thought it was. She will feel a little happier about that.
Countess- thank you, must have been primary challenge.

Can someone who know more about this explain the negative marking to me? Is it because its multiple choice? It sounds awful you are marked down only for wrong answers not for blanks - but are they trying to exclude guesswork?

It is set up like that to prevent guesswork.

But some kids still guess and every now and again, one gets lucky :)
A few years ago, a pupil came from nowhere in my school and got nearly full mark in the Senior challenge. His parents emailed the then HoD to complain that we didn't know enough about their 'talented son' and asked us to give him some support for the British Maths Olympiad. I was told to see the kid. I asked him one question, he gave me one blank face expression and then admitted that he guessed most of the answers.
Since then, we always warn pupils about guessing as they will get found out in later rounds.

I can understand it (even though dd fell foul of it due to not listening.) They probably think that kids shouldn't get extra marks for lucky guesses when they can't actually do the maths questions.

ToffeeCaramel The mark scheme is printed on the front page anyway so it wouldn't be down to not listening but also not reading the instructions too!

That should be a valuable "exam life" lesson for your DD too. Always read the instructions and what you are being asked to do.

As regards the certificates which are sent to the schools as blanks to complete my understanding is that the schools can opt in or out of this as there is a small fee to pay for this part of the service.

The papers and solutions are already online
www.ukmt.org.uk/individual-competitions/junior-challenge/

Yes, I wrote earlier in the thread that it would be a good lesson for her for future exams.

Bumping as I'm expecting the results to be released soon?

We've not heard anything...was wondering if it was because DD didn't do well enough to get an award of any sort.

My Dd has done it in the past but not this year sadly due to a new head of maths. She normally gets bronze or silver

They announce it on Twitter when they release the results, but nothing there yet. See here: twitter.com/UKMathsTrust

The 2017 JMC follow-on round qualification scores are: Kangaroo - 86; Olympiad - 107! 10 marks less than last year.

Sorry! got last year's thresholds wrong. Last year Kangaroo 93-112, Olympiad 113+.

Happy for DS that he scored into Kangaroo terrority. Nice surprise as he is in yr8 and I don't think school put him in for this in yr7.

Results were emailed to schools yesterday, so expect to hear soon!

DS (Year 7) very happy as although he doesn't know his score he is through to the Olympiad, and came top of both his year and the year above.

Unfortunately, even though we have a DC who has done all this Maths Challenge stuff before, we can't remember anything about the Olympiad. Does anyone know what happens next?

DD told us last name got that she got a silver which is marvellous. Nothing about kangaroos or olympiads. I assume that is for the DC scoring really, really well.

She is pleased and so are we.

Empress, Silver is great!

Peter, that's great!!

LadyP that's fab !

For those through to the Olympiad - the format is completely different, written proofs of questions. I downloaded some past papers for ds last year and he was just flummoxed at first look. I talked him though a few, he actually knew the answers but didn't know how to go about presenting what they asked for, and he did quite a bit of practice in his own - and did quite well in the actual Olympiad. But if he'd have gone into it without seeing those practice papers he'd have had no idea.