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.

My DC are at a state primary in SE London (Ofsted outstanding) and they offer JMC to interested kids in Y5 and 6. Other local schools largely don’t I think. It will just depend on the staff at each individual
school. Kids had to come in at 8am to do it on the Thursday so it didn’t interfere with usual lessons.

They’ve added a new row for 2025 with *s down at the bottom of this page which was not there before. https://ukmt.org.uk/junior-challenges/junior-maths-challenge-awards

Wondering whether there’ll be more updates soon

My sons 'good' state school let's pupil try pmc and jmc from year4 onwards . Jmc is a bit too hard for year4 in my opinion , pmc is better

Schools approach to PMC and JMC is incredibly varied.
My son did PMC y5 at his primary because I asked if he could as he was graded 'exceptional' in maths.
Previously only ten or so y6s invited go do it with zero notice which is tough, not good for confidence to suddenly be getting 50% in a math exam ahead of SATs. This was Outstanding school, math hub lead etc. Bit disappointing tbh but at least they let him take it.

Lots more kids take JMC maybe 250,000 Vs PMC is about 60,000. PMC run by MA, JMC run by UKMT. There is merger talk.
PMC can be taken anywhere really but you have to be a UKMT test centre to offer JMC and above and if you've sorted that adminstrative task out then maybe you don't bother with PMC

Last year I therefore had to ask two local (possible) secondaries could he try JMC in y6 (clutching his PMC bonus round result as evidence that it was a good idea). One school took a long time not to facilitate...sigh, the other quickly said yes and was great inviting him in to take it with the y7s.
Both outstanding schools but guess which one is now his high school!
(TBH a secondaries attitude to the UKMT math challenges is a good straw poll for their attitude for maths - Separately another good local school doesn't even do JMC! Aghast!)
If you look on PMC bonus round names you will see approx 50% independent schools even though they are 10% of population so yes it seems more indies care about PMC. But also you can see indies entering large numbers which I'm sure is a mixed experience.
As for JMC I have no evidence of how Indies regard it but imagine it's the same as they seem to like external challenges.

I cannot emphasize enough the Simon Singh website. It's free and has weekly problems and weekly math circles. Also now an Academy strand which is small group tutorials. Yes for free.
https://parallel.org.uk/

Ours does both in state primary too (London), it’s seen as extension for brighter kids who want to do it. Some bright kids don’t want to do it! They get asked if they would like to give it a go. I suspect that in some preps they are more heavily encouraged to give it a go/selective preps most kids/if not all, try it.

Is this likely to be what my DS did last Thursday? All I know is that he had to take a maths test in the hall and was pissed off that he missed PE!

Yep that’s the one! DD was pissed off to miss doing a science experiment 😅

My son was entered for this (he's only in Year 5 and there were a small selection of Year 5 and 6s entered). He goes to a primary school which is attached to a secondary school, and it's the first time they've entered Year 5's and 6's.

We only got told 2 days before, so had a little time to look at past papers, but it seemed way, way above his level. I used to teach Functional Skills Maths, and to be honest, some of it seemed way above my level. However he was quite happy afterwards and thinks he did "ok", bless him. He quite enjoys trying to logically work out problems and his basic Maths is pretty good for his age, so I'm assuming that's why they chose him.

He didn’t score 121 last year, he must have misremembered. The top mark possible is 135 and questions are worth either 5 or 6 marks each. There is no way to lose precisely 14 marks. The closest he could have got is 120 by getting three 5-mark questions wrong (but it’s unlikely someone would get 3 wrong in 1-15, but then get all 10 of the much harder last ten questions correct).

Your math is correct but curiously some kids whizz through the early ones, but can make some simple errors.
It seems the later, harder questions slow them down enough to make less mistakes.
I've seen examples of more mistakes in first section than in second section

It's funny you should say that, because my son said just the same the other day and said the maths wouldn't work! In his school, the pupil who scores the highest JMC mark receives a special school cup for the year with their name and score engraved and it definitely says 121, so perhaps it's an error on the school's part!

My son is at a private school. A handful of children were chosen to do the JMC in Yesr 6 (I think around 7-8 children - possibly the ones who were awarded academic scholarships to the Senior School) and were taken to the Senior School to sit it in the exam hall with the older pupils. I think Sets 1 and 2 all sat the JMC in Year 7 and in Year 8 it was just Set 1.

His school also offer the BEBRAS challenge, which is computational thinking, and my son really enjoys this - and qualified for the next round, which is the OUCC and has more focus on coding. He found that harder, as I don't think they had learnt enough coding!

In terms of Maths, a few children were offered Maths mentoring in Year 7 from Year 12 students at Friday lunchtimes, which he really enjoyed. They went through more advanced papers and questions.

Although my son didn't officially sit the Intermediate Maths Challenge this year (as he is in Year 8 and was sitting the JMC), the school gave him.the IMC paper afterwards, so that he could complete it under timed conditions and then they marked it.

I don't know much more, as my son is only in Year 8, but I know that for GCSE all top set students are entered for the Further Maths paper.

Couldn’t it be that pupils can receive partial marks for a question where they don’t get it fully correct?

Thanks so much, everyone, for your helpful replies. I really appreciate you taking the time. I’ve gained a lot of insight into how private and state schools approach maths differently.
My 3-year-old is currently at the nursery of an independent prep, and I’ve been debating whether to keep her there or move her to a nearby state school (which is outstanding and one of the top-performing primaries in the city). Your responses reassured me that a good state school can definitely be a great option too.
As for my son in Year 7, he’s in Set 1 for maths and goes to a weekly challenge club at his school. From what he told me, only a small number of students at his school sat the JMC.

My daughter did the JMC last year in Year 5 and got a Gold + Kangaroo and then got a Gold in the follow on Kangaroo. She is hoping for an Olympiad this year. She got two wrong (she remembered her answers when checking against the solutions...the last one and then a careless mistake in one of the early questions). She is very good at maths and did do some past paper practice.

You definitely cannot get partial marks for the questions. Multi choice with only one correct answer receives full Mark's.

Reading the posts here I am thinking of how maths-gifted kids you all have! I was wondering do you do extra maths outside your school curriculum? If yes, what resources do you use?

I also wonder the same. I have DCs in very average state primary schools with no talks re maths challenges. One of DCs is very interested in these things and is capable (and one not).

What do the kids who are successful at these competitions do at home as maths enrichment when parents don’t have the skills to help with.

Is beast academy any good? Is it relevant to UK centric Maths competitions?

Or if they are very good at school maths and do some extra work with the resources following national maths curriculum, do they also get better for the competitions?

@MTHRVRD2030: we do a bit outside of school as the maths in primary has not been very challenging and my daughter does not enjoy it/gets bored so we give her problem solving things to do outside school, which she loves, so she doesn’t take a dislike to the subject or become complacent. ‘Nrich’ is a great maths website for problem solving extension stuff. Singapore maths books for problem solving are also great. We are quite a mathsy family though!

https://nrich.maths.org/

The drfrost website has many resources for free - all the JMC past papers, past kangaroo papers, this is a great way to prepare at home. We also purchased the book "Junior Problems" published by the UKMT which has JMC problems from the past 20 years or so sorted by topic which is very helpful. That way, you can choose a topic like "algebra" or "geometry" or "decimals and fractions" and then work through all the JMC problems at varying difficulties.

If useful for you: my son takes https://virtual.aopsacademy.org virtual classes. For his JMC prep, he took group JMC prep course from here: https://mathsaurus.com. He also does free problems here: https://artofproblemsolving.com/alcumus and DrFrost from his school.

Already posted this but cannot emphasize enough the Simon Singh website. It's free and has weekly problems and weekly math circles, which is quite a new thing to this country.
Also now an Academy strand which is small group tutorials. Yes for free.
https://parallel.org.uk/

My son has just always loved maths, but Math Explorers was a brilliant interactive way of him doing maths with others online (when there was nothing local to us in person. I can’t recommend it highly enough if you as a parent aren’t all that into maths.

https://online.roots2grow.org

This is an initiative in state schools, if you state school doesn't do it you should ask them to. Again circles, funded by a rich Ukrainian I think

axiommaths.com/

Thank you so much for sharing the info. I second the AoPS resource. All the basics for problem solving maths.

I have heard of Singapore maths books? Which one to get please.