Crunching the Numbers

The UKMT Junior Maths Challenge is a challenge held annually by the United Kingdom Maths Trust (UKMT) aimed at pupils in Year 8 and below in the Standard English Curriculum. This challenge is made up of 25 questions and is split into 3 levels of difficulty. It is taken under examination conditions and the students are given one hour to complete the paper, however, they are not expected to complete all of it within the time given as the paper is quite challenging. The paper is out of 135, and the top 40% of the students achieve either a Gold (7%), Silver (13%) or Bronze (20%) Award. There is also a second round which students can qualify for if their score is high enough, called the Junior Olympiad, in which 1200 of the highest scorers globally are invited to compete. This year, 80 students took part in the Junior Maths Challenge in St Christopher’s on the 28 April, with students from both Year 7 and Year 8. Many of the students managed to complete more than half of the challenge, with most only leaving out around 5-6 questions. The paper was challenging, making the students think logically and laterally, as well as mathematically, in order to answer the questions. The questions included the topics of shapes, angles, time, money, probability, ratio and proportion, and the four basic operations but the main focus is problem-solving. The results arrived at the end of May, announcing that 10 students achieved a Gold Award (77+), 17 students achieved a Silver Award(63 to 76) and 19 students achieved a Bronze Award (52 to 62). Two students, Yousif Alnajjar, 8C and Farah van der Kooi, 8B, qualified for the Junior Maths Olympiad having gained a score over 107. Yousif Alnajjar was the highest scorer in Year 8 and Talaal Sharif, 7C, gained the highest score in Year 7. As a St Christopher’s student, I am proud to be able to compete in this challenge. I would like to give a big well done to all the students who took part.

Hibah Muzammil 8F