The Junior Challenge is aimed at the top third of students in Year 8 and below. The students chosen to take part take a one hour multiple choice paper under examination conditions. Those of you thinking that multiple choice is going to be easy should think again, as to get the very highest scores, you have to think very carefully and also be a little strategic. In fact the last 10 questions are not just down right hard, but if you choose to answer these questions and get them wrong, then you start to lose point from your overall score. These are not normal standard mathematics questions either. The challenge goes out the way to come up with clever and thoughtful problem solving situations and students not only have to pick and choose which mathematical skills to use, but they really have to be able to comprehend the questions in the first place.

About our students

This year we entered 57 students. Of these 47 were from Years 7 and 8, whilst 10 students were also chosen from Year 5 and 6. Students aim to get into the top 40% of all entrants worldwide. These top 40% gain either a Gold, Silver or Bronze certificate in the ratio 1:2:3. With statistics like this, we would certainly not expect all our students to gain a certificate. However to the credit of our students, 74% of our students achieved a certificate: 13 Gold; 6 Silver; and 23 Bronze. An excellent achievement indeed!

Our best in school entrant was Kelly Kim in Year 7 with an outstanding score of 115 (out of 130); also noteworthy are Year 5 students Tomer Zaidman and Brian Kim who also achieved Gold Certificates - our youngest students ever to achieved Gold! Finally three of our students did so well that they have been invited to participate in the next round called the Junior Mathematical Olympiad. Congratulations to Kelly Kim, Lucas Khan (both in Year 7), and Tomer Zaidman (Year 5) who will take part in this event next week.