Well over 100 of QE’s youngest boys took part in national competitions open only to the UK’s mathematical &ea cute;lite towards the end of last term.
Twenty-eight boys from Years 7 and 8 were invited to participate in the UK Mathematics Trust’s 2017 Junior Olympiad and a further 88 in the Junior Kangaroo: these are the follow-on rounds from the Junior Maths Challenge.
Six boys won medals in the Olympiad, headed by Dan Suciu, of Year 8, who gained gold with this score of 58 out of 70. Year 8 boy Abhinav Santhiramohan received a silver distinction medal with his score of 48, while Year 8 pupil Bakri Abubakar, Mukund Soni and Ruixuan Wu, both of Year 7, each took bronze. A further 21 boys achieved a merit certificate. “I never thought I would get a medal as I was in set 3 when I was in Year 7,” said Bakri.
Congratulating all the boys who reached the Olympiad and Kangaroo rounds, Assistant Head of Mathematics Wendy Fung added: “Of the 250,000 who sit the Junior Maths Challenge, only around 1,200 nationally qualify for the Olympiad, so simply to be in this competition is a tremendous achievement.”
The Olympiad consists of a two-hour paper of in-depth mathematical problems, to which there are two sections: Section A requires answers only, whereas full, written solutions are required for Section B. Medals were awarded to the top 210 performers.
In the Junior Kangaroo, 29 boys achieved merit certificates, which were awarded to the top 25% of scorers among the 5,400 pupils invited to participate nationally. It is a one-hour multiple-choice paper, with 25 questions, which pupils sit in school. It is thus similar in format to the Junior Challenge question paper, albei t more challenging. Amudhu Anandarajah, of Year 8, was QE’s top scorer, with 123 points.