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.

All levels below gold just sit one test, the original challenge.

About 7%-8% of participants receive a gold, around 25,000. I think about 15,000 of these take no further part.

The top 10,000 or so golds take the kangaroo follow on paper except the top 1,200 who take the Olympiad follow on paper.

Learning a lot from your posts, thanks all! I’m sure this thread will become really helpful for those DCs taking JMC/kangaroo/JMO in the years to come.

Not all the Gold Award winners go through to a next rounds (Kangaroo and Olympiad). The top-scoring 1000-1200 children go through to the Olympiad round. The next 10,000 go through to the Kangaroo round. The rest of the Gold Award winners don’t move to the next round.

Good luck to all DC's taking the follow on exams today. I dropped my DD off this morning and she seemed fine. I just hope she can get some traction on a few questions and its not set too hard.

Good luck to your dd @Jonny234 and to all dc taking these today.

Can we come back tonight for a consensus on how hard the Kangeroo was this year!

My ds was very nervous this morning but went in determined just to give it a shot.

DS has end of year school exams this week and today is busiest day with 3 papers and then Kangaroo after school and then crucial knockout cricket match. What a time to be 12!
Good luck to all, but there's no need for nervousness as no further rounds - this is the fun part

@Statistico I should have said mine is generally very anxious, so anxiety is a very regular part of our lives even about things he’s looking forward to! You are 100% right that it’s really just for fun and I’ve very much sent this message.

I hope your ds’s day goes ok @Statistico! That is a very action packed timetable isn’t it!

Had an anxiety journey myself. A thing I say to my DS is you cannot be excited without being nervous and the other way round, both feelings are present and connected.
You can be 90% excited about something but there will be 10% nervousness but also you can be 90% anxious but there will also be 10% excitement. Find the excitement or rather recognise both are going on. Helps to reframe.
They may express nervousness but they may also be excited about just doing this special thing and even excited about the possibility of about doing well, hard to self-recognise that when young.
Forgive my unsolicited advice.
If your child has got to Kangaroo they are already amazingly talented at math.

@Statistico i appreciate the advice and thank you. I think these are very wise points and I might revisit with ds at the weekend

Good advice.

My DD was telling me about a few girls worrying about EoY exams and I told her an old saying that my Grandad often used to say.

"You die if you worry and you die if you don't so what's the point in worrying"

My DD being my DD then tried to pick the bones out of it for about 10 minutes. What a rabbit hole that was.

I just always tell mine that nothing is critical, if she performs well or not so well it is neither here nor there. A top test result is great but could perhaps lead to complacency, whilst one just under where they'd expect to be could be great as it could re energise them into addressing a shortfall. et etc. So if she has a test and gets 100%, 80%, 60%, 40% her future learning strategy will then adapt to this and she has yrs pre GCSE to sort it.

What my DD seems good at is not worrying.... imo its just a total waste of time, and that makes her perform better. But she appreciates she has to be a bit nervous to perform and that this is good for her. I tell her "fear is your friend"

@Jonny234 good advice here too and thank you!

Some very interesting and correct points you made.
I absolutely hate the new rules that do not deduct marks for incorrect answers. I have a theory why they changed it but not going to put it out on an open forum.

DD sat her Olympiad paper this morning and was generally happy with the paper. After so many attempts, she should find it more straight forward or the paper has got easier.

I think I prefer the no marks deducted rules as I think it’s less stressful for students like my ds and more encouraging to enjoy maths. As always I guess different things are right for different dc

I think I prefer the no marks deducted rules as I think it’s less stressful for students like my ds and more encouraging to enjoy maths. As always I guess different things are right for different dc

I’ve just seen my ds who is now home and he says the Kangeroo paper was more fun than last year and about the same difficulty level. I wonder if the fact he rated it as more fun means it was actually easier? But who knows?

I will be very interested to hear what other dc say!

How did everyone find the Olympiad paper today? Was the general consensus it was easier or harder than last year do you think? Be interested to know. Thanks.

My DD emailed me post Olympiad this morning to say she completed 5/6 questions fully, left one altogether and wrote a lot of reasoning and about a full page on each.

At the time and without any further detail I did wonder if she meant what she wrote or she'd had a good stab at 5.

At that stage just hearing that she hadn't bombed gave me a big sense of relief. I'd have hated her to go in there and not be able to have a go at any.

Had a chat after school and it's dampened a bit from the headline but still promising. She thinks she'd done very well on 2, slightly less better on another 2, and got the answer wrong on one but may pick up a few marks for workings. She says her gut feeling is on the right side of half marks.

There are some big threshold gaps for most candidates and I just hope that unlike some unfortunate DC's who took the JMC she doesnt fall slightly short of one.

As for it being easier or harder than normal I've just asked and she said it was hard as usual. To her no discernable difference to past papers. I just hope the examiners made it a bit harder like a poster on here said they might going off past comments.

Son (9) said Olympiad went well and he thinks he got at least five questions right but only answered 2-3 in detail. Headmaster thinks he didn’t write enough detail in any of the answers. Will be fascinating to see the results

Great achievement just to take the exam at that age and he'll have loads more opportunities to refine his technique. I've thought before that the hard part even for my DD11 is attempting full workings. By what she's telling me she may have done a decent job on this today.

DC felt Kangaroo went well, he answered all with enough time to do some checking except one which he then excitedly managed to figure out in last 3min to go. So that alone is a great positive experience.
Only 4 go through to take Kangaroo from ~50 unprepared JMC entrants.

Happy for your DC. Good to hear the bit at the end, it'll go some way to engraining persistence in them.

4 from 50 is a good ratio. I was disappointed what I heard today from my DD regarding this at her school. She took the first hour alone, then 3 Yr7's and about 8 yr8's walked in and they all took the last hour together. Thats from a cohort of approx 240 across the 2 yr groups.

Not good enough. She's in the wrong school.

@Jonny234 does that mean 12/240 = 5%? Is that not about right for the percentage doing follow on or am I missing something? If it’s top 5% taking it through to either Olympiad or Kangeroo? We had about 5% as well at our school with more from Year 8 than Year 7.