Junior maths challenge 2025

[scisso]

Does anyone know when the results and boundaries get announced? How was this year’s paper in comparison to previous years?

DD sat it and thought some of them were quite hard so had to guess them, but she hasn’t done much of the past papers so doesn’t have much to compare against.

any insights would be very much appreciated.

Has anyone’s DC had their kangaroo scores yet?

DS hasn't had his yet. He came out pretty confident and remained confident after looking at the answers... He thinks he might have got gold but I think it might be close

Same for my DD - she managed to finish the paper so I’m hoping that’s a good sign

Did anyone’s results arrive yet?

Nothing here. State school though and the maths challenge isnt a huge priority, staff are really stretched and it might take them time to pass out results even if they have them.

Hopefully soon!

Yep school emailed late in day.
DS got 118, Gold Kangaroo certificate. Great work!

Just refreshed my email but we had nothing!

Incredible news @Statistico!!

That’s fantastic!

That’s brilliant, congratulations to your DS

Still zilch here! Are we the only ones still waiting?

We are still waiting too

Good luck to yours then @RJ2025 hopefully not long to wait now!

Thank you - you too 🙂

Seems UKMT thinks they've sent out all results. Totally agree most teachers very busy!
Hope everyone gets results soon.

UKMT newsletter:
"Our cycle of competitions in schools has drawn to a close for another year. Various developments are coming soon, perhaps the most radical of which is the introduction of the Primary Kangaroo competition, our first competition outside the secondary sector. We ran a pilot version this year, and will start the process of turning it into a national competition in Spring 2026. Internationally, this is often referred to as the Écolier Kangourou and is the largest of the contests organised by the Association Kangourou sans Frontières. As with all our mass entry competitions, we aim for the highest standards while keeping the entry price “cheap as chips”. One innovation is that the exam paper will be brightly coloured to attract the very young children involved"

I'm not sure when the JMO is to be marked. In 2023 the exam was Thursday 15th and results were very quick on Tuesday the 27th, just 12 days later. This year the exam was on the 10th.

I've read the marking by volunteers is at a weekend but can't find out if its this wkend or the one after. On X UKMT posted they'll be marked at the end of the month which probably indicates 28th/ 29th rather than 21st/ 22nd.

So looks like it might be a circa 3 week wait.

Count yourselves lucky…in 2022’s JMO we didn’t get the results until mid September!
UKMT are on fire at the moment & their turnaround time has shortened for every Olympiad sat since. Cayley, Hamilton & MacLaurin (Intermediate year-specific Olympiads for Y9, 10 & 11) were sat 29th March with results out on 9th April so just under 3 weeks. Marking them is a completely different beast to marking the Kangaroos.
Not long now & good luck to all of your clever kids…UKMT has got to be one of the best of the best enrichment organisations out there ❤️

@NewTaupeBeaker I am in Bucks too and I don’t know a single person who has done tutoring for this and we are at a grammar. My son got Kangaroo silver but he didn’t do any work beforehand. I didn’t even think you could. Surely you can’t revise for a maths test like this?

Has to be the parents especial at such young age for such an achievement which requires loads of time, dedication, patience and ofcourse they must be very mathematically capable themself too. Later on from secondary then it could just that they get to be very keen and could also come from peer motivation too

Well done to your son!
In the JMC & JK the questions are deliberately designed to not require extra topic knowledge, but having said that - if you've seen some particular approaches that can be very useful - a good example is there is often a shaded area of a compound 2D shape and the useful solution insight here is to subtract two different areas - once you've seen that idea once you will remember it.
These are things you are unlikely to have come across in school maths at y7/y8.

If interested there are 12 years of past papers for the JMC and 10 years for the JK available for free on the UKMT website, all with solutions
In particular the JMC has "Solutions and Investigations'" which are more detailed, extend math thinking and offer some insight into the question-setters style.
When I was a kid if that resource had been available to me I would have devoured it, not because I wanted to practise for the Challenges but just cos 'oh wow this maths is different from school stuff and fun' ! A handful of school friends the same

The lack of resources generally in the past was a major hurdle. These days it's all there for them. That said, not having them it did teach valuable life skills such as resourcefulness and resilience.

Someone earlier in this thread asked what suggestions do people have to get their kids to a competitive JMC level. My answer would be apart from looking at a few past papers to get familiarity with the questioning dont specifically study for it.

In my opinion get your kid on a maths app early and gently encourage them (not bribing). Try and make it a shared problem, get involved. With my DD on Doodlemaths I setup a spreadsheet, one column her actual age, the next her doodlemaths age, and showed her the progression over time. This was motivational for her to see progress she'd made. Start off maybe 1 level or 10 questions a day, when they finish ask them to try 2, perhaps 3 levels. In no time they are doing 10+ levels per day, trying to keep a streak, are fully engaged and it's easy for the parent. They kid takes responsibility for it all. These apps get harder gradually so you never really have to do any teaching.

Don't care about accuracy, if your kid's doing 100+ questions a day they learn from their mistakes automatically.

For a few years now my DD has just been coasting really, she does the bare minimum for maths apart from finishing early vs the rest in class and moving onto harder stuff. There is no extension work at home at all. It's all very economical.

I reckon anyone out there, just in the summer hols with the right approach can advance their kid 1yr in maths. It may be a tough start but once it gets rolling things can move very very quickly.

We got our results this morning! Ds has done much better than we thought and got a high silver score on Kangaroo (just one answer off a gold). Relieved and pleased for him!

I’m still not convinced that having gold to bronze for this is a very motivating set of grades for the kids who do well enough to get through. I feel like Kangaroo distinction for the top 15%, Kangaroo merit for the next 15% and then just well done for taking part would be better.

As it stands the reward for getting through to Kangaroo with a high gold is going to feel to most kids like sliding “down” to silver, bronze or below bronze.

Fantastic results!