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.

I'll mention again (sorry for the third time) that I think this is the best free math resource out there.
https://parallel.org.uk/

It you're a math bright kid of course you will find your way but having watched my own kid learn maths there's a huge amount of properly fundamental stuff that I missed out on at this age.
Good math teaching matters and math teaching has improved lots in UK. DS primary school used Singapore math approach which is so good it seems totally obvious and astonishing that all kids are not taught this way.
The presenter/tutors on parallel are top level.
I'll be quiet now

Well done! hard luck on being an answer short for gold though :(

Just thinking, my suggestion for grade boundaries would be to standardise the JMC and the Kangaroo in whatever way they see fit.

Seems a bit unnecessary to have 50%/ 25%/ 8% grade boundaries for the JMC and then 60%/ 30%/ 10% for the kangaroo. They are almost the same.

Statistico

My DD's teacher was always suggesting parallel for her but she never got around to trying it. If she rekindles her love for maths anytime soon we'll give it a try.

Totally agree. Parallel Maths is an amazing free resource for anyone interested in maths.

It might rekindle said love of maths..one thing they do which is smart is they often use short fun YouTube videos in the weekly parallelogram problem. That format seems to be like direct neural input for this age group!

@Jonny234 that’s an interesting idea about grade boundaries. When you say they are the same is Kangaroo not harder than JMC?

Foxhasbigsocks

When I said they are almost the same I meant in terms of the grade boundaries for both the JMC and Kangaroo, and if so then why not standardise them? This would allow clarity regarding what is what.

Of course Kangaroo is harder than the JMC.

Because the format is the same I would expect a high level of correlation between performance in the JMC and the Kangaroo. There is a big difference between a 100 and a 123/124 kangaroo.

But lets say 120+'s on the original JMC relates/ maps/ correlates to kangaroo gold, 115+ silver kangaroo, and 110+ bronze kangaroo. If the grade boundaries were the same it'd just add a bit of clarity, a gold Kangaroo would lead to the presumption the candidate scored very high just off Olympiad level, and no medal at the Kangaroo would infer a candidate was not much above the kangaroo threshold.

The G/S/B boundaries are almost identiical as they are now for the JMC and Kangaroo but with this being the case I feel it's just be easier to make them the same.

FYI. UKMathsTrust just posted the below on X along with a picture.

A huge thank you to our JMO Markers who volunteer their time to carefully review and mark student papers, helping to ensure fair and accurate results for all Olympiad participants. Results will be released in the coming weeks. Good luck, everyone!

I'd agree they shd just make any medal percentage boundaries the same.

It's quite tough to reach JMO now. You have to answer correctly 23/25. If you make a couple of mistakes and you don't get the total score, even if you understood all questions.
My feel is the UKMT challenges were not intended to be about exam technique*, well not at this age anyway, but it seems there's been a more competitive environment has meant the JMO threshold has jumped in last 4 years
https://mathsaurus.com/junior-maths-challenge-grade-boundaries/

So I wonder if moving to Gold, Silver & Bronze in Kangaroo is perhaps a way of awarding something to those candidates who a few years ago would have got into JMO. A good thing.

From (all) the available past papers if the JMC question difficulty is graduated from Q1 to Q25.
JK Question difficulty is (IMHO) actually like Q5-Q30 on that same JMC scale i.e. the JK is not lots harder than the JMC.

*Multiple choice helps a lot and rather than ultra-rational 'exam technique' a more fun approach is can you solve this question but from a different route

Does anyone know if kids get a certificate for the Kangaroo? For the jmc it was school that printed it off is it the same for kangaroo?

Interesting re kangaroo being harder. Mine did better on kangaroo than jmc...

So did mine @Whistlingformysupper

@Whistlingformysupper yes they do get a certificate at least ds got one last year

Statistico

I agree that it's maybe got to a level where the Olympiad threshold is too high, perhaps it needs to come down to say 115 levels. You wouldn't want to exclude a worthy Olympiad candidate just because they made a simple error or two.

I'm coming at this as a newbie and may question your Q5-Q30 theory from the available info.

This yr the JMC mean is around 54 marks and the Kangaroo seems to be around 90, quite a gap in itself, and around 6-7 questions.

Then is it fair to include what I'd say is an automatic baseline? If a candidate Pot lucked on them all, and circled any answer on either exam this would average out at 27.

So I'm thinking rather than Q5-Q30, it feels like more of Q10-Q35 level or perhaps Q10-Q15 plus double Q16-Q25.

"It's quite tough to reach JMO now. You have to answer correctly 23/25."

Really 'have to'? How about the discretionary entry? If one is confident in doing JMO problems with JMC score between 100 and 124, my impression is that one can still enter JMO by discretionary route(pay a small fee?) Anyone knows more about this route?

I'd argue it's 24/25 correct. It's unlikely that the 2 incorrect would be from section A imo.

There are 4 ways to qualify this year (non discretionary):
135/135 - zero incorrect
130/135 - 1 section A question incorrect
129/135 - 1 section B question incorrect
125/135 - 2 section A questions incorrect

I wouldn't advise anyone not much over 100 on the JMC to go for the JMO, surely the smart move would be to try for a G/S/B on the kangaroo?

The info you need regarding discretionary entry is here. https://ukmt.org.uk/junior-challenges/junior-mathematical-olympiad

On the balance of probability I strongly expect my DD will have to go the discretionary entry route next year.

Great to hear the JMO has been marked. Fingers crossed the results will be out soon. Am hoping next week as a lot of independent schools break up on 4th July.

My DS (Y7) was the same, got 107 in JMC and 123 in the Kangaroo challenge, but we havent seen any certificates at all, not even a printed one.

If your DC does better in the JK than the JMC you may wish to look at whether they made several calculation errors or slips in early questions of the JMC through whizzing through them . Then as JK starts a bit tougher it holds their attention better and they make less mistakes. This was often case for my DC!
Alternatively if there's little prep at all then the JMC can provide useful trial run to JK as format is very similar

You've come to a very similar conclusion with a different method!

I was basing my crude 'seems like JK slides about 5 questions harder along difficulty scale' on my DC's results having previously completed many of the available JMC and JK past papers and I was going to suggest 5-7 but that was too complicated to write down.
I think JK Q1 is like Q5-7 of JMC but I also think nothing on JK is particular any harder than equivalent to Q30 on JMC was my point from this purely subjective viewpoint.

Don't forget tho the JK score distribution may be quite non-normally distributed Vs the JMC distribution so one may need to be very careful using mean. It would be interested to learn median for both these populations!

Thats a fantastic turnaround and congrats, it blows my correlation argument clean out of the water.

I can kinda rationalise it now from my experience with DD. She won't always be guaranteed top or well clear of the field in school but when it gets to a higher level that is when she shines. Like Statistico alluded to perhaps kids get more focus when things get harder rather than just casually breezing over easier questions without the necessary due care and attention. The other element to it is self satisfaction, I know my DD wouldnt necessarily care if she got an easy question right or wrong but she feels good if she knows it's a hard question she's got right.

Nightingale987 I presume they've been marked. I did wonder if the pic was an old one but doesn't seem to be. In 2023 they marked at the wkend and the results came out on the following Tues so I suppose it could be imminent. That said they do say "coming weeks".

Like you I'm private but summer breakup is a little later so I hope the results come back in time.

I just wonder if the thresholds will shock with the new format. I'm hoping they drop but get a hunch they'll probably be about the same despite there being 10 marks less.

Not all schools will support discretionary entries for the follow-on rounds. AFAIK, you need to register through a school for the UKMT competitions and, if your school doesn't want to allow discretionary entries, you're out of luck.

It's not clear to me that the Junior Kangaroo is, on average, any more difficult than the JMC. It is true that, typically, the 75th percentile Junior Kangaroo score is about two questions lower than the corresponding score those students had on the JMC. However, at least part of this is due to the nature of the selection process. Kangaroo qualifiers include a disproportionately large number of students who had good days on the JMC and a disproportionately small number of students who had bad days. The mean score that Kangaroo qualifiers achieve on the JMC is higher than the score that you'd expect if the same students took a similar exam again.

Also, there's no obvious benefit for UKMT to make the Kangaroo any more difficult than the JMC. By definition, Kangaroo participants who did not qualify for the JMO scored at most 23/25 on the JMC this year, and lower in most previous years. What need is there to increase the difficulty for students who weren't already maxed out?

@user149799568 if it isn’t more difficult what is the point of having a follow on round at all?

To make the contests more inclusive and engaging by giving more students a realistic chance of a more substantial reward than a certificate, and to provide more exposure to challenging math for some interested students.

The JMO has been around for something like 30 years. This year's is only the tenth edition of the Junior Kangaroo. Before 2015, the vast majority of UK schools did not have a single qualifier for the only follow on round (JMO), which limited engagement from both students and teachers.

Increasing engagement has been a focus of the UKMT in recent years, particularly at the junior level.

• They introduced the Junior Kangaroo in 2015 and have steadily increased the number of Kangaroo qualifiers from "several thousand" in 2015 to "around... 10,000" this year. In contrast, they've held the number of JMO qualifiers steady with the exception of 2021 (Covid).
• They dropped negative marking for errors on the JMC in 2020, the Covid year, to reduce the stress on some students. Interestingly, they never used negative marking on the Junior Kangaroo.
• They increased the percentage of certificates awarded on the JMC from the top 40% to the top 50% in 2022.
• They increased the percentage of certificates awarded on the Junior Kangaroo from the top 25% (Merit) to the top 60% this year.

The changes listed above are objective. Subjectively, I believe that they've also made questions 23-25 on the JMC easier since Covid, allowing more children to experience the pleasure of higher scores.

They're trying to make math more "fun" for the kids.

The first five questions of the Junior Kangaroo are clearly more difficult than the first five questions of the JMC in an absolute sense but I doubt any Kangaroo qualifiers will notice the difference; they'll get all five of either. But I don't believe the last five questions of the Kangaroo are more difficult than the last five of the JMC. There's no need for them to be. Again, none of the students sitting the Junior Kangaroo achieved full marks on the JMC, unless some opted not to sit the JMO, so the students should find the same level of difficulty challenging enough.

Just a random question if anybody knows.

Does anybody know if a school has Kangaroo's and Olympiads if UKMT wait till the results of the latter before sending through the results for both to the school? Or do they do it separately?

Is anyone's DC in a school with Olympiads who have got their Kangaroo result already?