On December 2nd, six QMC maths students sat the Senior Kangaroo Challenge. They had qualified for this national problem-solving competition by achieving a Gold Award in an earlier national competition – the Senior Mathematical Challenge which took place on Thursday 11th November.

Year 12 student Olly Brown competed alongside Year 13 students George Austin, Taylor Bullion, Josh Faulkner, Bradley Hall and Ben Wright to crack the 20 fiendishly difficult maths problems, with the prize of a Merit Award for the top 25% of candidates in their sights. The highest-scoring participants would then be invited to compete in the British Mathematics Olympiad, having proved themselves to be among the top mathematics in the country in their age group.

The Senior Kangaroo Challenge is an annual competition run by the UK Mathematics Trust. QMC mathematicians have a long history of participation in the competition which aims to challenge the brightest young puzzlers to apply their logic and reasoning skills to solve particularly tricky problems that are novel and unlike anything the candidates will have met before.

We hope to hear in the next week or so how well our intrepid puzzlers have fared.

Promoting a love of problem solving

The Senior Mathematical Challenge is a 90-minute, multiple-choice Challenge.

It encourages mathematical reasoning, precision of thought, and fluency in using basic mathematical techniques to solve interesting problems.

The problems on the Senior Mathematical Challenge are designed to make students think. Most are accessible, yet still challenge those with more experience.

Date: 10-11 November 2021

If your students sit the paper on the first day please ensure you collect the question papers back in from students and only release them back to the students at the end of the second day. You may wish to arrange the Challenge on the second day, if you are able, so that students’ enthusiasm to discuss the questions after the paper has been taken is not curbed.

Eligible year groups: England, Wales and Overseas – Year 13 or below, Scotland S6 or below, Northern Ireland – Year 14 or below

Time allowed: 90 minutes

Andrew Jobbings Senior Kangaroo

Providing an additional opportunity for problem solving The Andrew Jobbings Senior Kangaroo is a follow-on round to the Senior Mathematical Challenge. It is a 60-minute Challenge consisting of 20 problems. Unlike the Senior Mathematical Challenge, the answer to each Senior Kangaroo problem is a positive integer less than 1000. Achieving a high score requires engagement with the problems, without the benefit of five options to choose from. We invite several thousand qualifying UK-based students from the Senior Mathematical Challenge to take part in the Senior Kangaroo. Entry to the competition is either by invitation which is based on a qualifying score variable from year to year, or by discretionary entry.

Date: 2 December 2021

Eligible year groups: England and Wales – Years 13 and below, Scotland – Years S6 and below, Northern Ireland – Years 14 and below

Time allowed: 60 minutes