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.

@Foxhasbigsocks He has always been gifted at maths and could do the maths section of Countdown when he was three. God knows where it comes from as his mum and I are terrible at all things maths related.

@Surfer1978 that is amazing! Mine couldn’t have done that but has also always been crazy into maths and could add and take away at two. It sounds mad but you could show him 8 strawberries, say if I take two away how many have I got and he would say 6, without needing to count them! He has always loved numbers.

DD heard today that she got into the Olympiad. She got a Silver and Best in School last year and thought this one was easier than the one last year. School doesn’t prep them, but she did past papers at home. Don’t know anything about the Olympiad. Don’t know how to prepare. Thanks for the resources already posted. She already does Parallels! Please post more!!!!

Congrats all, must be a great sense of achievement, particularly when school maths comes very easily to them. No results here yet!

Just wondering, do the yr7 and yr8's sit the same paper or is it 2 separate?

@Jonny234 They sit the same paper. In my daughter’s school they sit it at the same time in different classrooms.

Thanks. I looked around and while it didn't say that, equally it didn't say anything to the contrary so I presume it's the case. Seems a little unfair in a way.

Happy that my Yr7 DD11 has made the Olympiad. 6 questions in 2 hours sounds a bit adulty and double the longest exam I think she's ever had in her life. Suppose whatever the outcome it's good practice for later life.

My son got told he got gold today but he didn’t get told his score and from memory he never has. How do you find out please?

@Jonny234 Not unfair - ‘mathsy’ children enjoy this sort of thing regardless of age. It’s having two goes at it. In my daughter’s class there are children that love it and others that hate it! We just told our daughter to enjoy it - no pressure - and she did - last year and this year.

@PammieDooveOrangeJoof The school will have the scores.

Ask his teacher. The school get emailed the results in a spreadsheet.

I agree on a level and my daughter is the type to just turn up and achieve what she does and the fact there is no pressure whatsoever from us, apart from a little she may put on herself and this probably benefits her. It's the way to go.

Think I might be a bit overprotective having a younger child in the year. One way to look at it asking is it really benchmarking anyone when other Junior Olympiads could be September Yr8 births and almost 2 years older? More rewarding though is knowing despite this age disadvantage she's still able to compete at the highest level.

@Jonny234 I do think it can be hard on the younger kids in Year 7 and below to be up against old Year 8s and even young Year 9s. People enter internationally and the same age group in other countries will also be at varying levels depending on how their curriculums work with some ahead and some behind the UK on the complexity of what they teach in those age groups.

There also seems to be a massive amount of prep for the JMC at some schools (not that much at ours!), some parents doing a lot of practice with kids across the whole year/years in the run up and people accessing paid for tutoring for it. There is in effect a hidden curriculum with similar types of problem coming across the years.

It is definitely not a completely level playing field. In that it’s different to any type of test I guess though and my ds really does enjoys doing this kind of maths like your dd.

When my DS did the junior maths challenge the school didn't tell the parents about it until after the results came in.

DS didn't mention it at all and when I asked him about it when I was told his result he just remembered doing a fun quiz.

He got gold , the first gold in his school's history ( state school ) Sadly his love of maths didn't last beyond GCSE and he dropped maths A level after a year.

I wish I'd known more about these challenges as I've since heard that some employers look for success in these things when looking at CVs.

DS couldn't be bothered to do any more challenges once he got to senior school but if I'd known I'd have pushed him more.

The JMC in particular is meant to be fun!
I've always been aware independent schools tend to do more prep for the maths challenges but they also tend to enter lots of kids including those who do not necessarily love maths.
I'm sad to hear paid for tutoring etc., but I guess the middle class will always game any system they suddenly think has value.
Lots of free resources out there for the plucky staties, so don't fret. And JMO will separate the well-drilled from the actual talented.
For anyone who scored less than 135 :-) I'd very much recommend looking at the "Solutions & Investigations" to the JMC 2025 on the UKMT website.
R2Drew2 on youtube is good speedrun

Actually he got 124!
Which is fantastic but I hope he's not disappointed not to reach Junior Olympiad

A great result all the same, its just a shame the cutoff is where it is but I suppose thats to get the percentages right from their end. Always a shame to be just on the wrong side of a threshold.

Part of me wonders though if they set it at 125 to encourage a flurry of 124's to make a discretionary application to increase their fee income?

The Junior Kangaroo is essentially the same format as the JMC: multiple choice questions with the answers entered onto a computer-readable form. It costs very little to mark another entry, almost certainly less than £4. OTOH, JMO solutions need to be read and marked by a competent human. Many DC will put down mathematically sensible solutions but won't know the standard language to express themselves so it can take some time for a reader to work out what the underlying arguments are. And I think each solution is marked by more than one reader to improve consistency. UKMT rely on many volunteers but their resources are limited. That's why they set the limits where they do for the number of free Olympiad entries (1000-1200 for the JMO this year) and that's also why they're restricting the number of entries for the Mathematical Olympiad for Girls from next year.

Congrats and it is a fabulous result already

Out of curiosity it would be interesting to know what percent of kids got what mark at Olympiad level. 4 possible marks, 135, 130, 129, 125.

129 feels the most likely of the 4, one hard question incorrect. This must be 30%+, maybe 50%?

125 feels very unlikely, 2 easier questions incorrect. This must be sub 10%.

I don't suppose we'll ever know the answer.

The UKMT may have full score analysis, but could you get it from them? I'm sure they want to know which questions were hardest/easiest but would their electronic marking deliver that data?

As an aside the BMO Markers report they give a nice graph with all the scores and frequencies. In the JMO markers report they also discuss how many attempted each question and average score.

I do think it is more common than one might think to have errors in the easier questions as kids whizz through the 'easier' ones and tend to do them intuitively & without writing much down.
DS got one 5 mark and one 6 mark question wrong.
He got Q9 wrong because he missed the fact that the second digit could be zero. Once you've made this error it may be hard to 'unsee' it. Multiple choice is not your friend here as 37 is a possible (incorrect) choice - especially if you've not written anything down.
He did not apply the algebraic approach in the solutions and I doubt many would bother.
That all assumes time to go back and check which in DS case he did have 5mins, but perhaps you don't tend to check the easier ones as much either.
Good active checking methodologies exist but I certainly didn't train myself in these until much older than 12 E.g. positively eliminate the other choices, answer question backwards, change one input and adjust answer, make an input into an extreme value - (good physics/engineering checking method that one), try a completely different method e.g algebra.

That's why getting your kids to look at the Solutions and Investigations on the JMC website rather than just Solutions is a good idea!

Just spotted this thread and had a quick read through. My daughter is in year 8 and found out yesterday that she achieved best in school. She achieved the same last year and we assumed it really meant best in year group as year 7 and 8 take part. Is that not the case? Also, her school keep it all very low key, so all she knows is that she’s ‘through to the next round’, but it seems from this thread that means she scored over a particular amount? Is that right? DH and I are both crap at maths so we’re very proud!

All good points and I agree. A lot of it is about exam approach and I'm sure when kids are checking at the end they pay more attention to the more difficult questions.

I've been saying to my DD for a while if she does want to check don't necessarily revisit the question and apply exactly the same methodology. Instead try and answer the question using a different method and see if the answer is the same. Not always possible.

I havent looked at the paper apart from Q13 which my DD answered incorrectly because she claims she misread/ misinterpreted the question. It seemed pretty easy. Perhaps one thing my DD doesnt do is just jot down the basics on scrap paper before attempting to answer.

I was never specifically taught exam technique when I was a kid and I kinda learned this iteratively and slowly. I'd guess my DD now is perhaps at the level I was at A level....partly because I'm making her think about it more.

The Olympiad will be a whole different kettle of fish in terms of approach. Double the time of her longest exam in her life to date and just 6 questions. I'm already suggesting an approach of do nothing for the first 5-10 mins apart from read all the questions, then rank them in order best to worst on gut feeling which she likes most and tackle them in that order.

With her normally reaching high percentages in maths exams I seem to have 100% got her head around the fact merit last yr was just 20/60, and bronze 38/60. This yr with the easier section A being dropped these thresholds may be as low as say 15 and 34? So like I said to her this morning, even if she got 8 marks on 3q and 3 marks on 3q she'd be there or thereabouts for a medal.

Overall though it just feels like I'm plucking random figures out of the air. I'm happy she's made it to this stage and anything else is a bonus. All I wouldn't want is the unfortunate situation like yourself that the final mark is 1-2 points off the next threshold. If merit range is indeed 15-33 say I'd be as happy with a 20 as a 32.

I'll admit though, a medal of any colour would be lovely. But my base expectation is a merit.

The threshold for Merit on the JMO last year was 20/70 while the threshold for Distinction was 38/70. Both Part A and Part B scores were included for those. The threshold for Bronze Medal was 38/60. Only Part B scores were included for medals. Someone who got 10 on Part A and 37 on Part B would have got Distinction (47/70) but not a Bronze Medal (37/60).

If they set the boundaries for Merit and Distinction to recognize the top 25% and next 40% again, I'd agree that they will be structurally 5-7 points lower than last year's, albeit out of 60 rather than out of 70. Many children who were serious about competing for a medal last year were aware that Part A didn't count there and ignored Part A completely. Because of this, I suspect that the boundaries for the medals won't be structurally much different from last year.