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.

The boundary for Merit is indeed 22, but that's the highest it has ever been, not lower than in previous years. And that's without Section A, so 22/60 this year where the previous high boundary was 21/70, which should map into something like 15 on Section B alone. So the top 65% of participants made good progress on three problems this year whereas the previous high was two Section B problems.

I'm afraid that I don't understand your argument.

@user149799568 yes apologies, I was incorrectly on the grade boundary being lower for a merit. Apologies.

Headteacher just emailed us, DS9 got 33 and a Distinction. Almost full marks on the first three questions but hardly anything on the second half, even though he got the answers correct (but didn’t show working/proof).

Pleased for him esp as some school teachers have previously said he isn’t as good at maths as we think he is (my wife and I are terrible at maths so can’t accurately gauge his ability). This feels like a good benchmark, especially as he’s still in Y5.

Wonderful news, what a great result for a DS9.

I find the teacher comments funny. Imo your DS is better at maths than they are.

How did you know the itemisation of marks? Was the script handed back?

The school receives the itemization of the scores. They also receive a userid and password which can be used to log into the UKMT website and download the scans of the child's script. The schools is supposed to share these with the child.

The markers report is out.

Given the thresholds I did wonder yesterday if the average would be 25 or 26, in fact it's 25.5. The distribution isnt necessarily what I'd expect though, it looks quite "normal" with a very small upper tail. The "sweet spot" is 26-30.

The profile lacks smoothness, especially at the high frequency 22 threshold and low frequency 33. I guess they checked/ remarked a fair few close to these to maintain the integrity of the 65%/ 25% bands. Looks like a similar thing happens around the bronze threshold too.

It wont let me post the link but its on the site.

My DD finally got her kangaroo results today - a high silver! I’m so pleased for her

My DD got a Silver in JMO, missed Gold by a mark. Hopefully will keep her motivated for the higher maths challenges

Also I heard that a Girls School won the most amount of medals at JMO this year - this is a first for any of the Olympiads and bodes well for attracting girls in this and following batches.

Curious which girls school could it be? Only SPGS comes to mind

When I see the past achievements of places like WUS and St Pauls boys I'd be surprised if this was true.

However, I'd be more than happy to be proven wrong.

I would not be surprised if this year lots (majority?) of medalist just solved the first four problems. While not to lose a couple of marks per question solved, you want to carefully describe the solutions leaving no logical gaps. My personal observations (but might be wrong here) - girls are more careful in general than boys :) Hence I can see this scenario as possible. At least in our case - DD with a medal, four problems carefully crafted while not much credit received for the last two problems. Though she is definitely not “a part of the scenario” as she yet to join the secondary school. Exciting times ahead

Alternatively, the boys schools might have had a "bad" year. This year's paper was rather different from previous years and the marking scheme was, arguably, stricter than in previous junior competitions. Schools where a lot of children prepared for the JMO, e.g., WUS and SPS, might have been relatively disadvantaged if they prepared for previous years' standards.

If it is true that a girls school got the most medals this year, the question is whether they got many more than in previous years or that the "usual suspects" boys schools got many less?

I'd love to know where this info about a girls' school winning the most medals comes from. I do know that the top girls' school is big on discretionary Olympiad entries as result from heavy parental pressure. Interestingly, the same school never broadcasts any UKMT successes on social media or in its newsletter, even at EGMO level, so it's hard to garner info from an internet scrape.
I wouldn't expect a correlation between discretionary entries & medals but it's not unheard of for some kids to perform better in the Olympiad-style questions over those in the Challenges.

Just found out my DD11 got a lowish merit close to the average. As I've said before I am more than happy with that. I'll take it all day long. I think a certificate of qualification may have made her question if she really belongs at Olympiad level.

When I saw the markers report the other day and the apparent strictness in the marking I did start to wonder where she would land but fortunately it's turned out all good.

More the anything I think going forward the experience will benefit her, and she'll now know if she wants to do better next year (assuming she qualifies) she actually has to be more diligent and thorough in her preparation which she certainly wasn't this time around.

I did know that the top girls school doesn't appear to publicise their results but didnt know about the discretionary entries if that happens.

If they do indeed go down this route then it feels a "bit suss" to me. Imo they should just be open and honest about the whole process, good or bad.

Otherwise what a school could do is prepare specifically for the JMO, and not the JMC, knowing that whatever JMC mark their pupils achieve they are in the JMO anyway.

The discretionary entries TOTALLY happens...parental pressure is through the roof. I find it really weird that they don't celebrate successes even internally though. Maybe they don't want to create jealousies in an ambitious parent/student body which is not unheard of.
Maths is having its moment and a decade of outreach, especially for girls, seems to have paid off. The MOG has been cut right back this year to 2 free entries per school and a max of 2 discretionary entries. This is going to be a massive headache for those top private girls' schools...how to dish them out without causing an uproar!

All the top private schools - girls or boys - do discretionary entries and the pressure from parents is no less in these schools, so that cant be a differentiating factor. The outreach seems to have paid off as @Combinatoric says - even from the comments here, it is evident that there are so many DDs entering and doing well here.

@Jonny234

Otherwise what a school could do is prepare specifically for the JMO, and not the JMC, knowing that whatever JMC mark their pupils achieve they are in the JMO anyway.

I think you overestimate how much preparation schools, even the ones whose students get the most outstanding results, do for these competitions. I am familiar with several and they generally do no more than give a (single) past JMC paper as math homework in the run up to that contest. These schools do facilitate some JMO prep but that is in lunchtime or afterschool clubs; even at WUS or SPS, only a minority of the boys will actually take the JMO and it is not justifiable to spend class time on this. That is not to say that students at these schools do not prepare extensively for these contests; many do, but they do it on their own time, not on the school's, and most do it with their parents or with tutors rather than with their school math teachers.

The reason that schools, even the top ones, do not spend much resource on these exams is something you alluded to in previous posts: these contests have little to do with senior school math. Being able to answer the last 10 problems on the JMC and, even more, knowing how to write complete solutions on the JMO does not help very much on the GCSE math exam, and spending time to get better at these things is a very inefficient way to improve GCSE math scores. I know one school, which regularly features in the top 10 nationally for GCSE results, whose math department is absolutely dismissive of the UKMT competitions. From their point of view, it is the "wrong kind of math", i.e., not the kind which will help their position in the GCSE or A Level tables. I do not think their attitude is that unusual among secondary schools.

You mentioned math majors in a previous post. Most of the people I know who studied math in university have said that it was a shock how different it is compared with the math they studied at secondary; they were expecting more of the same and had no idea what they were getting themselves into. When the UKMT write that they are trying to "[advance] the education of young people in mathematics", they are not talking about secondary school math, even when the contests are aimed at secondary school students.

Thanks user149799568 its always good to hear your view.

I wasn't necessarily saying that schools do that but they could if they so wished. I agree with your other comments though, the prep is undoubtedly more of an extra curricular activity for those taking the exam for the reasons you provide.

There is admittedly an "indirect" nature of the UKMT exams. Most schools would probably prefer to spend time on directly relevant prep for GCSE/ A level as that's the metric that appears to matter most. The lack of learning enrichment however may have implications.

I actually studied math major, in fact it was all Maths Code G100 at a UK redbrick, about as mathsy as it gets. I would say a lot carries over from A level but then a lot is completely new. What most annoyed me is it soon gets very niche and almost irrelevant unless you want to specifically develop an academic career. Employers like the subject because it shows someone can think logically, but what you actually learn (and invariably very quickly forget) in most cases hasn't any direct application in the real world.

Ultimately I ended up accentuating maths with a broader masters and professional qualification. Undoubtedly tthe maths helped a lot but looking back it did need something else.

It is a shame that competing in these maths competitions seems so high stakes and linked to whether or not it will improve IGCSE and A level scores. I would think that these competitions are precisely for the type of student for which IGCSE and A level would provide very little challenge in order to achieve highly. It provides one avenue alternative, extra challenge for those students who may not be stretched by the normal curriculum. They will not count for much at all, getting an olympiad medal at age 10/11 but nice to have the recognition for the child at the time. My daughter just loves the challenge and does them for fun...really enjoys them and finds them satisfying. Conversely, she finds much of the school maths to date rather dull. So this is keeping her challenged and interested which I think should be the main point of them.

It does feel that the enjoyment of puzzles / challenging maths problems is a must-have at the Olympiad level. While I hear about the parental pressure aspect, it is hard to imagine how this may lead to positive long-term outcomes when it comes to top-level competitions (unless the “pressure” somehow fuels the interest and enjoyment from the subject). Or am I missing smth?

I did a pub quiz the other night including with a guy who I see once in a while and works for a London bank, a really smart guy. He was an Olympiad when he was younger, about my DD's age. He was one of these who's school didnt take the exam so sat it at another, got the top mark at that school but then said he didn't get awarded "best in school" because he wasn't at that school. I found it funny.

Anyway, I asked him if employers like him faced with CVs with top grades ever look for something else like Olympiads to differentiate between candidates. His take was certainly yes.

Admittedly this is only a sample of 1.

Frankly historically any kid even getting into the JMO (without extensive prep) ought to be expected to be on a pathway to breeze their GCSEs and A levels, just on natural ability alone.
I guess if schools/parents over-prepping then some candidates may no longer be quite in that group?
Imho there is a difference between someone very good at school maths who can be trained up to do even Olympiad level and someone who actually loves the math enough to train themselves up.

Four good friends who studied maths at Oxford (course starts very pure math, at least back in the day) really rate(d) the Olympiad processes as good training for their entrance stuff and course.

An age ago, I interviewed grads for city derivatives trading roles and I absolutely would have favoured Olympiads on any CV above boring A level results (which for those roles one would expected pretty much straight As any way), though even then I was aware enough to moderate any achievement by school.
And then we'd ask them things like the Monty Hall Doors problem and other such hoary fun math questions. Also some real world guesstimation questions to check they didn't live in their own head.

@Jonny234 I would be very surprised if many employers would look at olympiad medals won when their potential candidate was 11 or 12. I think it would be a bit strange even to add it to a CV! You would think that is not very relevant that many years later. But also, what an awful pressure for kids to think that what they achieve or don't achieve at 11 is going to make an impact on their job prospectswhen they are 22+. Certainly, I achieved top grades at school and university and it has made very little to my career progression. The soft people skills are so much more important. I think school grades are a passport to university, university degree helps secure a good first job. But then, you are as good as whatever you do next. Almost after your first job, the school grades are just not important anymore. So definitely a junior maths olympiad would be of minor importance. Obviously this is just my perspective and I can't speak for all employers. But I do think putting too much emphasis on these things for kids is too much pressure and will be bad for their long term wellbeing and enjoyment of learning.