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.

@Statistico this is very similar to what my ds said! He said he finished the paper and was able to go back and redo some.

Foxhasbigsocks I think 5% isnt necessarily bad generally but expected more from my DD's school.

I think the qualifiers for the follow on round exams give a feel for what the standard of the school is like. There can be a fine margin between Kangaroo and Olympiad. I told my DD this might be the last Olympiad she takes, next yr it'd be easy for her to get another Q wrong and be a Kangaroo.

Her school didn't prep specifically for it and maybe that partly explains it.

To be honest I think one should relax about Olympiad at Junior level.
IMHO precocity (is that a word) has been an historically overvalued trait in UK education. Very pleased to hear previous excellent primary school actively discouraging topic progression and deepening understanding instead and that is actually the goal of the whole UKMT endeavour and why for example you pretty much can do Kangaroo with barely any algebra -despite the official solutions being (overly) full of it!
To be able to construct the fully blocked-out logic for full Olympiad solutions is quite a bit away from where any 12 year old needs to be right now.
My DS could solve 5/6 of last year's Olympiad but presented little evidence so not the right exam for him currently. Kangaroo has been good fun instead.

Does anyone know how long it takes for the JMO results to come out?

I think about 3 weeks. Last yrs marking report said the scripts were marked 21st-23rd June. Then I came across an old thread on Mumsnet from a few yrs ago where people were saying results early July but then some seemed delayed, but that may have been the school rather than UKMT?

We've had a look at Kangaroo answers and DS may have got 2 wrong so 124, exact same score as he got in JMC.
Both small slips i.e. calculation errors - one early on and one near end (so also exactly like JMC). Annoying for him as his method in the later, harder question was the smart route that makes it easier (often this relief can lead to a mistake)
The single thing that would improve his scoring would be a rigorous checking regime but that might suck the joy out of the whole thing at this age, that will come naturally when he's more 'on the page'
(Last year he also got the same score in both JMC and then again in Kangaroo)
Took A LOT of wickets last night too

@Statistico are the Junior Kangaroo problems and answers out already?

My DS got to take his physical home.
This is probably an error but the small number at his school all took it at same time.
Obviously I will not discuss any actual questions until results out, apologies if we've jumped gun.
The JMC paper was online in UKMT last month within a day or two.
Just FYI Last year's Kangaroo was on Tues11th and DS got told his result late on 17th

Wow Kangeroo results were quick last year

I guess Kangaroo is marked electronically from a marking sheet like JMC and it is only approx 10-12K entries Vs the 200K+ for JMC.
I hope we get results Mon 16th?

My DS sat the Olympiad yesterday. This was his first Olympiad (he did the Kangaroo last year). He didn't have much chance to practise, as this is his Year 8 exam week in school - 15 exams plus the Olympiad in 5 days 🙄 I think he'd only done 2 past papers. He wasn't sure what to expect. He said it was hard, but he answered all 6 questions. He found the first 2 OK, and thinks he got them right, felt reasonably OK about the next two, and said the last 2 were tricky but he did his best. I have no idea how.much he wrote. I think he enjoyed the experience, although the timing wasn't ideal with his other exams. Does anyone know when results are releaaed? Good luck to everyone for the Kangaroo and the Olympiad!

JMO solutions are out now: ukmt.org.uk/video-solutions-list/jsf/jet-engine:video-solutions-grid/tax/video-solution-challenge-type:204/

Thank you.

I skipped all the videos and just had a quick look at the link to the written solutions below.

When my DD came home on Tuesday she said she'd done 5. Was very certain on 2 being very good, almost as certain on 2 more and unsure on 1 of them.

The very certains were Q3 and Q4. In fact she wrote out the questions and then worked through the solutions in front of me. She's got them both correct and from what I remember her workings/ rationale were very much in line with what the solutions are. If she's really gone 100% into the workings or not I'm not entirely sure of but I'd be surprised if she scored less than 15 across these 2.

The one she unsure about was 6. She says she did workings but we checked after and she got something like the 3rd or 4th smallest number and not the smallest number. She hoped she'd got maybe 4/5 marks on this.

Even with just these 3 she should be almost borderline Merit and I'd be more than happy if she achieves that. At 25%-65% it's as good as average of those who sat the exam.

I'll ask her about the others later today.

Official Kangaroo solutions now out
ukmt.org.uk/competition-papers/jsf/jet-engine:free-past-papers/tax/challenge-type:68/#free-past-paper-anchor

And we missed another error, so DS has likely got 118. (Hope he's not annoyed as he got 119 last year).
Not bad at all, I imagine should be comfortably top 10% which is now a Gold Certificate rather then a merit I read here:

ukmt.org.uk/junior-challenges/junior-kangaroo-awards

Gold Kangaroo is an achievement in itself. I don't think he'll bother about the 1 mark less.

I am doomed to be in total suspense as ds completely refuses to look at any of the solutions bar one. He only deigned to look at question 25 which he tells me he got right.

Foxhasbigsocks I know the feeling after experiencing it in the past. Sometimes my DD just refuses point blank to go back and look over things.

She did look at the Olympiad solutions though yesterday after school, she was in fact eager to. She compiled a range estimate for each question and then best guessed a particular number. That yielded 29-41 with a best guess of 34 or 35. I'd probably estimate a few marks less than that.

She says she got Q1 almost correct.... she specifically remembers the numbers 11 and 13, and almost sure she got 4329 for Q2. Claimed to do about a full page of workings for each of the 5 questions she answered but ummed and ahhdd a bit when she saw the solutions. Maybe she had a logical approach but it was flawed or slightly different to the textbook solutions. No point in delving any further really.

Wherever she lands it's been a good experience for her and will stand her in good stead if she qualifies next year. Like I've said all along I'd be more than happy with a Merit but perhaps, just perhaps, a Distinction could be a possibility. I'm giving it maybe 10%-20% chance.

This is because I wonder how the changes will pan out when it comes to the levels. Distn last yr was 38+ which going off previous year splits would likely be around 6+32 or 7+31, sect A/B. With section A off the table though it allows more time for candidates to consider section B. So perhaps the Distn threshold could be 35+, Bronze 40+?

Just went through the video answers with my son and he's got all the answers right (we looked at the questions first and he told me the solutions, then we watched the videos). I don't even understand most of the questions, let alone the answers!

However, it sounds like (as his headteacher suspected) he didn't show enough workings. He got confused by an instruction on the front page not to include rough workings so seems to have omitted a lot of the work he'd done on a separate piece of paper. And he didn't include any drawings 'because the answer sheet was lined and also I didn't need to do them'.

So it will be interesting to see how he is scored, given showing the workings is a big part of it! He can still do the JMO three more years so hopefully he learns from this experience. He loved doing the Olympiad so much - couldn't believe how pumped up he was before it, like he was going on an amazing school trip. Personally the idea of doing hard maths for two hours fills me with dread!

That's great to hear, unbelievable for a year 5. To answer them all is fantastic for that age. Likewise my DD was pumped up even though she knew it was going to be far from easy. I wish my DD had the opportunity to take the exam earlier, I think she'd have got a Kangaroo.

I think the workings element is critical but I think it's guesswork about what qualifies for it, and what marks a candidate would get for a correct answer and skeleton workings. We see the solutions but perhaps a different approach is equally or at least part worthy.

It's all about waiting for the results now, I'm curious more than anything. I read this tweet from UKMT yesterday when someone enquired.

"Marking for the JMO takes place at the end of the month. We cannot confirm an exact date for the results to be released, however, we will be in touch with schools as soon as they are available. Team UKMT."

So I'd expect results early July.

Gosh - your children are giving you so
many details. My DD has been focusing on revising for eoy exams so she spent very little time looking at past Olympiad papers. Her school did not provide any preparation for it. She said that the Olympiad paper was fun - she completely missed out one questions - the algebra one, thinks she answered two really well, two more, okay, but she wasn’t sure and the did a bit of work on Q6 and then ran out of time.

This sounds very much like my DD's experience with the 2 well, 2 OK, 1 Bad. She did end up doing some last minute prep though but a lot of that was suggesting exam technique rather than answering questions.

I know it's only a sample of my DD plus 2 on here but I'm starting to wonder if the exam was easier than previous years? With a normal section B mean of early 20s it would appear all our DC's have exceeded that.

The JMO dropped into conversation again this morning with my DD and she's firmed up her thoughts, she seems to think she's about 22 marks for the 2 well + 1 bad.

The Junior Kangaroo 2025 Thresholds are out:
https://ukmt.org.uk/junior-challenges/junior-kangaroo-awards

So this means schools should also have individual scores also today

It's not super clear but the 'Previous Thresholds' listed on the UKMT page are the scores in the JK required to achieve a Merit in the JK in previous years.
Up until 2024 the only threshold within the JL was that the top 25% of scores in the JK would achieve a Merit
ukmt.org.uk/junior-challenges/junior-kangaroo-awards

New for 2025 are Gold, Silver & Bronze each are the top 10%, next 20% and next 30% (note the careful language)

A good explainer here:
https://mathsaurus.com/ukmt-junior-kangaroo-past-papers-and-grade-boundaries/

Thus new 2025 Silver threshold is the top 30% in 2025, actual score 101 (and Gold, the top 10% at 113)
The 2024 Merit threshold was the top 25%, actual score 103.
To me this would indicate scores on average might be possibly only a smidge higher this year, or not really at all.
(Distributions can get lumpy towards the tails in these)

101 30% and 103 25% look about bang on to me. Silver 113 indicates a raw average of 1.666% per mark across a 12 pt range but that'd be concentrated and a fair bit higher at lower levels.

Didn't realise until today that the old thresholds were so uninspiring. The G/S/B is far better even if it's arguable if they go too far down to 60%. Maybe mimicing the Olympiad but with bigger ranges would have been better?

Wow so for gold or silver Kangeroo you can only really get a few wrong! I’m not sure how rewarding getting these different award levels will be for kids getting marks this high over and above just getting those mark which is impressive enough in itself. And doesn’t ‘bronze’ just sound a bit anticlimactic for kids who’ve done well enough to get that far?

Interesting to see how high approx 1/3 of those taking Kangeroo have scored.

I am keeping my fingers crossed for ds but the gold and silver marks sound pretty high so not sure he will get those. Likely to be bronze or just qualification certificate.