Intermediate Maths Challenge

[justlumpingalong]

Anyone's kids do this last week?

DD (year 9) did it, and said it was really tough. She'd done a few practice papers and was consistently around the Olympiad boundary, but reckons she only scored around 80 in the real thing, and doesn't think this will be anywhere near the Olympiad cutoff.

Yep. Oldest currently dealing with mocks, spoken English language exam and final graphics project.

Quite rightly, she turned up, did what she could and forgot about it. Fair to much important stuff going on right now to worry about that one on top!

It’s a good competition.

DD made gold and got a certificate a few years running.

Ended up in a team final and came 4th - state school others were private so did incredibly well.

I was so proud!

Yes, DD did it (Y9) - she said it was hard! She got gold last year. Her school only put Set 1 in for it this year.

For those whose DC participated, did they do any special preparation for it? Did you look at past questions etc? Or anything else?

We got sent a link to some past papers but no pressure beyond that.

No prep here either. I think there might be some past papers on their school Teams though.

My DD never made it through says she is never doing a challenge again just missed out. But a few class mates who guessed most of the paper made it through to that stage.

IMC has negative marking for Q 16-25
So, guesswork can help only so much

The organisation which conducts the Maths challenges, UKMT, has past papers and solutions on their website

No prep - they just do it their maths lesson. I think they did get told about it a week or two in advance so it may be that some did take the chance to look at past papers in their own time (my DC didn't) but they don't practise at all in class.

Ds did it I think. He knew nothing about it until the lesson! I don’t know how he did or how to find out the results.

Y9 DS did it, no prep though they did know beforehand. He got silver last year, but that was the junior level. He thought it went ok, but he was a bit wary of the negative marking. He's hoping for at least silver again.

thank you, all. DD will do it next year and I was wondering if people do any special prep for this. Looking at the questions, they are different (and more interesting!) than the usual problems they see in school/homework. Will share past question papers with her.

This year is the 4th time my daughter has done it and she has improved year on year so it is hard to say if it is harder than last year.

Like all exams, practicing past papers will help. There are a lot of books, resource, website to help if they want to get better at it.

I thought the negative marking was removed couple of years ago or is that just for the first round.?

Negative marking was removed for the Junior Challenge (U13) but remains for the Intermediate and Senior Challenges (U16) and (U18).

DD did the Maths Challenges for many years (Junior, Intermediate and Senior) and always enjoyed them. Over the years had a number of gold certificates and qualified for the follow-on rounds a couple of times.

I understand that they are intended to be interesting problems to solve and there is an emphasis on getting satisfaction from working through fewer questions well rather than simply guessing at answers to complete the paper.

Working through the past papers and resources on the UKMT website can certainly help. DD's school never made a big deal out of it - some DC who were great at 'school maths' never did particularly well at the maths challenge; others loved the problem-solving element and did better than expected.

If your child likes maths they are good to do and I think most also quite like the competitive element.

My Y10 did it. Thought it was tough.
So, chucked the paper at his Y8 brother, who did the first 15 questions (and got most right). And declined to tackle the second half.
So, I guess the first half was OK, but the second half was tough.
All the previous papers are online - with markschemes and explanations.
DS1 did no prep.
I guess doing his brother's paper will be DS2s prep for the junior version later in the year!

My Yr11 DS did one last week, said he found it OK until the last couple of questions which were impossible (his words).

DS said there was negative marking for wrong answers on his paper.

My Y9 daughter did it. She said it was much harder than the past papers had been. Whether that’s true or the pressure made it harder I’m not sure.

Difficult for a Y9 to do under time pressure. Most students commenting on various forums rate the 2024 paper as easier than average and expect grade boundaries to be higher than last year's.

Grade boundaries were published yesterday 47+ bronze, 61+ silver 77+ gold so slightly higher than last year. DD in year 10 is hoping for a silver I think.

When are the results out do you know @IThinkIMadeItWorse

@JustHereWithMyPopcorn schools should have access to results now when they log on to the system I think. Hopefully DD will hear on Monday. They don't seem to have said what the olympiad/kangaroo boundaries are yet and I thought in previous years they were released at the same time.

Thanks @IThinkIMadeItWorse DS is on half term next week so I guess they’ll get them when they return.