We were very pleased to present our top-scoring pupils in the most recent Maths Challenges with their awards last week to recognise their exceptional achievement in mathematics. Last term, a record number of students from Years Seven and Eight qualified for the Kangaroo and Olympiad competitions. These are tricky national competitions which test many aspects of a pupil’s mathematical skills.

For the Kangaroo, the top-scoring 25% of participants from each school received a Certificate of Merit; for us, that meant 56 students. Each participant below this threshold received a Certificate of Qualification. For the Olympiad, certificates are awarded based on the total score of Section A and Section B. The top-scoring 25% of participants received a Certificate of Distinction and the next top 40% received a Certificate of Merit. The remaining students received either a certificate of qualification or participation depending on their entry route.

The UKMT tells us that medals are awarded based on the total score of Section B from the Olympiad only. Each of the top 40 scorers in the country receive a gold medal, the next 60 a silver medal and the next 100 a bronze medal. All medallists also received a book prize. From Wilson’s, one of our students, Spencer, achieved a gold medal. We also had 4 students achieve bronze medals: Jamie H, Fraser, Razi and Anthony C. This is an amazing achievement, so we wish our best congratulations to them.

The photos show Jamie, Razi and Anthony with their medals, certificates and book prizes which were presented last week by Mr Hudson, Director of Mathematics. We would also like to formally say well done to all of those students who took part in both the Kangaroo and Olympiad—they were all presented with their certificates by their maths teachers last week.

Razi told us how much he enjoyed taking part in the Olympiad:

“I found the JMO fun to take part in, especially the questions in section B which were intriguing and challenging; they required time to work out and clear explanations to questions but, like last year, were satisfying to complete. Additionally, because we were allowed a lot of time, we could think about each of them, and this let everyone spend enough time on each question to solve and explain it.”