Intermediate Maths Competition

Year 10 pupils at Bacup & Rawtenstall Grammar School achieved 8 Golds, 13 Silvers and 21 Bronzes in this year’s UKMT Intermediate Maths Challenge.

Over 200,000 pupils from across the UK sat the Challenge, with roughly the top 7% receiving a Gold certificate, 13% Silver and 20% Bronze.

The percentages for BRGS were 16% Gold, 25% Silver and 41% Bronze.

The top scorer, Matt, with a magnificent 112 marks out of 130, was invited to sit a follow-on round called the Hamilton, which involved writing fuller solutions to six problems rather than taking a multiple-choice test. Matt is the first BRGS pupil to qualify for this paper.

Matt’s paper was particularly challenging and he received a Merit certificate for his participation.

In addition, four other pupils - Sean, Tom, Angus and Bryonney, qualified for the Pink Kangaroo round, which is a multiple-choice Europe-wide challenge.

The four Kangaroo qualifiers all received Qualification certificates.

Maths teacher Mr Wilbraham, who organises the Challenge, said: “This is the first time we have asked Year 10 to sit the Intermediate Challenge and their results were excellent. The pupils showed a fantastic attitude and all gave their best efforts to achieve a certificate. We are particularly pleased for Matt, who is the first pupil at BRGS to qualify for the Hamilton paper. The four Pink Kangaroo qualifiers have also done really well, as the students are only eight months into their GCSE studies and are just starting to get used to the more abstract style of questions that appear in the Challenge. The challenge tests mathematical thinking and application, rather than just remembering processes and methods. The new style GCSE involves more questions where these skills are needed and so the Maths Challenge is excellent preparation for what students might face at the end of Year 11. They are required to think about their answers rather than just guess and our results show how mathematically able BRGS Year 10 pupils are, as 82% received a certificate compared to 40% nationally.”

A sample question from this year’s Intermediate Maths Challenge is:

The angles of a quadrilateral are in the ratio 3 : 4 : 5 : 6. What is the difference between the largest angle and the smallest angle?

A: 30°             B: 40°             C: 50°             D: 60°             E: 70°

A sample question from this year’s Intermediate Kangaroo is:

Some girls were dancing in a circle. Antonia was the fifth to the left from Bianca and the eighth to the right from Bianca. How many girls were in the group?

A: 10               B: 11               C: 12               D: 13               E: 14

A sample question from this year’s Intermediate Olympiad is:

The largest of four different real numbers is d. When the numbers are summed in pairs, the four largest sums are 9, 10, 12 and 13.

What are the possible values of d?