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.

Results just out on Twitter (X) and on the website

@user149799568i haven’t, thank you so much, will look at this! She’s really bored in maths at school so trying to find some more fun challenges. She finds English much harder so don’t want her to be totally fed up with learning (either because it’s too easy or too hard!)

DS got silver:)

Wow. That's a surprise to me. Kangaroo down at 80 from 100 last year, quite a drop and lower than I expected whereas Olympiad 112 higher than I expected.

Looks for most that 21 questions or more correct bags the Olympiad, thats unless the 4 incorrect are all 6 mark questions.

Initially I guessed 115 for Olympiad, without having seen the paper at all but then after viewing it happily agreed 105 more likely. 112 is impressive. Don't think DS has got that close to that whereas 105 could have been annoyingly within a single question again

After many attempts, the older one finally got full marks. The younger one nearly got into JMO by strategic guessing and pure luck. Not a big fan of the scoring system in the JMC personally but it is what it is.

@Statistico Maybe that's a blessing in disguise that it isnt touch and go, it'd be awful to miss it by 1 or 2 marks.

@GHGN Full marks is amazing for anyone imo. Last year it was far more doable, but its a hell of an achievement this yr.

I mentioned the thresholds to my DD when i heard about them on here. Finally she sparked into life and for the first time since she actually took the exam started wondering what she may have scored. She went through the answers and tried to remember what she selected.

After the test was taken on the day she said to me:
20 questions confident on
2 slightly less confident on
1 educated guess
2 random guesses

She's looked through them and it seems promising. Apparently the 2 slightly less confident and the educated guess are all correct. One of the random guesses is wrong and she doesn't know about the other. (My guess is its also incorrect)

On the confident ones she has 12 right and cant remember the other 8. So as I see it she needs 6/8 on these to get to 21/25 overall.

I hope she doesnt fall short by one question.

I think it depends on the year and the kind of questions that came up. DD was close to full marks on many occasions across JMC and IMC papers but also felt short of the Olympiad threshold a couple of times by just one question as well.

This year, she actually put in a bit more practice and was a lot more careful. Her reasoning for the last question was very concise and was better than the official solution. She just labelled the finishing order numerically and listed all possible outcomes, used nCr formula to calculate the total arrangements.

This year’s threshold is a lot more reasonable so fingers crossed for everyone.

The children at the very top end were better prepared than I'd expected.

@GHGN I generally agree on this its about how suited the candidate is to the questions, like my DD took the 2023 IMC as a mock and scored 118 when cayley was 95 and Maclaurin 103. Then she takes the IMC this yr and scrapes Cayley. Specifically you do mention something she hasn't been taught with nCr so I'll take a not of going through that with her in due course.

@user149799568 Perhaps you have the right take in the main but I could offer a plausible alternative which may have ramped up the JMO threshold. Unfortunately the paper was leaked on Reddit and the original post is still there. Coincidentally I came across it at the exact time my DD was sitting the exam and could see it had been leaked the day before.... on Tuesday. It's a shame.

Most DC's sitting the exam won't bother to look but those near the top may be inclined to. It especially benefits those overseas who came across it as I understand they have an extra 24hrs to take the exam or something.

@Jonny234 I think that about 300,000 students have been taking the JMC in recent years. By the end of Wednesday, 300,000 copies had been printed and some children had been allowed to take them home. There is no doubt that students in New Zealand, Australia, and Asia could have found the paper if they'd wanted to. Unfortunately, I don't have a good idea of how many students in those time zones took the paper on Thursday and even less idea of how many of them would have looked.

I'm more surprised that you found the paper was available on Tuesday, before the UK students took the challenge. Again, it's not clear how many students would have taken advantage of that and, presumably, not all of them would have had access to parents or peers who were willing to solve all the questions for them. That said, around the Olympiad qualifying level, as few as 200-300 students getting 21 correct answers or above when they shouldn't have could have been enough to shift the boundary from 20 correct answers to 21 correct answers.

Would you provide a link to the Reddit?

@user149799568 I reckon thats a good summary, aggregated perhaps a few hundred looking and gaining an extra question, maybe pushing up their overall marks by 1 more correct.

I've tried to ascertain typical international entries in the past for JMC/ IMC and I believe it's perhaps around 10% of the total entrants, about roughly allocated across the board when it comes to grade boundaries.

This is the Reddit link https://www.reddit.com/r/UKMTleaks/comments/1sy3zmz/welcome_to_rukmtleaks_introduce_yourself_and_read/

@user149799568my child took it on the Tuesday (in the UK). I was surprised as said in the calendar it was going to be on the Wednesday. They didn’t take the papers with them though!

@Jonny234 thank you. I clicked through to the link and didn't see the paper. I don't use Reddit myself, so I don't know if I'm not permissioned or if I'm not looking in the right place. Do you still see the paper there?

@sunflowerdaisies that is news to me! I've never heard that was allowed. That said, invigilators are supposed to collect all the papers from the children but not all instructions are followed precisely.

I can’t see it on Reddit either. It was all very low key at their school and they didn’t mention it until
they were in their maths lesson taking it. I assume it’s what they took!! Guess will find out if no results come!

Sorry folks, I hadn't realised that the pics of the actual paper has since been removed. It was on there 100%, it was like someone had attempted the paper, done a few workings alongside the questions and circled the answers they believed correct and then took pics and posted there.

You can tell by the comment underneath "I have reported this to UKMT and this is going to get taken down and you all will be in serious trouble." as there is nothing in what the OP says now that is necessarily controversial.

I've looked on Waybackmachine, its not there.

We just found out that DS10 got full marks (135) in the JMC this year.

We know he’s gifted at maths but always hard to compare to his age group as UMKT don’t release any breakdown by age. I’m curious if anyone else has primary age kids qualifying for the Olympiad?

It's always a risk when they don't all sit it at the same time. With mobile phones they don't even need to take the paper out of the room. Maybe they'll make it so all of the UK has to sit it at the same time. That won't stop international candidates from seeing it before they sit it. To some extent it is going to rely on everyone cooperating.

My son got into Olympiad last year with 130/135 (in Y6). Qualified again this year in Y7.

Well done to your boy! And good luck for the Olympiad :).

DD had qualified for Junior since year 4 and Cayley since year 6. She also did the MOG too but I found younger students tend to not know how to present their solutions. DD used to write too much and run out of time.

DS (y8) got 105 here. So has missed out on Olympiad (112) by 7, having missed it last year (125 boundary) by just 1 mark. He will be a little bit annoyed at that.
Over Easter he scored 130/135 on an old JMC paper and 135/135 on an old Kangaroo paper so seemed prepared enough but clearly not.
He also took IMC for first time in Feb (which, as discussed on this thread was hardest paper for 12 years) and got to Grey Kangaroo and then Silver there.
In retrospect if you want to excel (answer 22+ correctly) in JMC it would seem Junior Kangaroo is not the level you need to practice to, whereas unfortunately IMC this year was maybe a tad harsh.
Has zero exam technique and a little bit of annoyance is no bad thing: wants to do more IMC papers now for sitting that next year!

@GHGN
Full mark this year is very impressive.
I have a pedagogical question for you. I’m trying to raise DD to become a deep thinker who can tackle Olympiad‑style problems, so I usually let DD work on maths problems with no time limit. When given enough time, DD can solve most JMC/JMO type questions.

However, under timed exam conditions, DD struggles with speed. Like this time, DD couldn’t get through many questions due to time pressure.

I’m stuck in a dilemma: I don’t want to train DD to rush through problems and sacrifice deep thinking, but I also worry DD will not perform well in timed competitions like JMC. Could you share how you trained your own child, and do you have any advice for me?

Your DD is amazing! Is she in year 7 and been selected for MOG! Wow

I am amazed at the amount of prep beforehand people on this thread talk about doing with their kids.... Almost doing training for the junior maths challenge?! My DS has never done any sort of prep for it... School just tell them the day before that they are taking it and what time to come to the hall!

@GHGN @Statistico @Surfer1978 and others whose DC got top marks,

I am really happy for your DC's achievements. This is huge work from their end. Well-done to them (and their parents)!

I have another purely pedagogical question for this thread 😊

Based on many of your DCs’ results and achievements, it’s very clear that a lot of you have done an excellent job supporting mathematical development from a young age. Some of you may also come from maths/STEM backgrounds yourselves, which I imagine helps a great deal.

I’d genuinely love to hear more about what you actually did when your children were younger and how that evolved over time. For context, I have a 4-year-old DD and I’m very interested in developing her logical thinking, analytical/problem-solving ability, and overall confidence with maths. I’d really appreciate hearing:

• what you did from a young age
• when you started “more serious” maths enrichment
• what resources you found genuinely useful
• how you nurtured and sustained interest in maths over time

Did you use things like:

• Beast Academy?
• puzzles/games?
• Doodle Learning?
• maths circles?
• tutors?
• competition prep later on?

And for those with older DCs:

• what resources do they use now?
• how often do they do maths outside school?
• do they have tutors/coaching?
• how independent are they?

One thing I sometimes wonder about is this: many mathematically exceptional children seem to completely immerse themselves in maths and happily spend 3–4 hours a day on it. For parents who are not from maths backgrounds themselves (I’m a sociologist), what would your advice be if your child is interested and capable in maths, but not naturally “obsessed” with it? Basically: how do you encourage strong mathematical development without turning it into pressure or burnout? Would really value hearing different experiences and approaches.