Once again, our intrepid BGS Mathematicians have stormed the UK’s most famous school maths contest. This time it was the turn of Years 7 and 8 to step up to the plate and test their mettle against the fiendish intellect of the UK Maths Trust (UKMT), the inner circle of question-posing boffins whose mathematical interrogations can turn even the most able young minds into a panicky jelly of incoherent innumeracy.

Over a hundred BGS students took part this year and, needless to say, their results were stunning:

So our “Gold Rate” this year was 28.4%, four percentage points higher than 2025, which itself was miles above the UK national average of 8.3%. A superb achievement which everyone can take pride in.

Our highest-performing students were invited through to the next rounds of the competition. This includes the famous Kangaroo, taking its name from the historic ties between UKMT and their Australian counterparts. This was a large group this year!

They achieved excellent results: two Golds, three Silvers and five Bronzes from a group of nineteen. Special commendations to Delilah Sargent 7DCC and Iyla Clark 8SBM for very strong performances – and especially to Maninder Singh 7YMS, who achieved the coveted Best In School result.

Even better, two of our JMC students performed so brilliantly that they were invited to the UKMT Olympiad, putting them in the top thousand or so young mathematicians in the country! These were Scott Morris 8KVC and Jigeesha Gupta 7MCW. The Olympiad is a gruelling two-hour written challenge in which students are pushed to the very limits of their abilities; at the time of writing we await the outcome with anticipation.

Our roving reporter caught up with Scott, who had this to say about his experiences in the Junior Maths Challenge:

“Last year I took part in the JMC for the first time and was really pleased to qualify for the Junior Kangaroo. This year I was delighted to qualify for the Junior Mathematical Olympiad, which is for approximately the top thousand scoring children.

The Olympiad is very different to the other two challenges as it consists of 6 difficult questions, which require very long and detailed answers – a little as though you are writing a maths textbook or paper to publish! To prepare for it, I looked at a few past questions (sadly, not as many as I’d have liked to as we had school exams at the same time!) and attended some webinars by the Parallel Maths Academy. Although we had 2 hours for the paper, I found the time went quite quickly as the questions required lots of focus.

I am proud to have qualified for the Olympiad, and was quite excited to see what the paper would be like as it was something new that I had never done before.

I did enjoy taking part as I have always really liked maths – especially more complicated questions which need you to reason and use a variety of theories and approaches to find the answer. To me, maths is like a puzzle which I really need to find the answer to, and I find it very rewarding. My favourite questions involve number theory and algebra.

For future mathematicians taking part in the JMC, I’d say to just give it a go! The first half of the paper is fairly straightforward, with maths we cover in our lessons. You don’t have to complete it in numerical order, so my advice is to choose the type of questions that you prefer and do those first. With the harder questions, there is always enough information to be able to find a solution within a few minutes, so if you are struggling then you should reread the question and approach it in a slightly different way.”

Scott Morris, Year 8

We wish everyone who participated in this year’s competitions the very best in their future mathematical endeavours. Students who might wish to get involved in any of the competitions next year can find free practice papers on the UKMT website at this link. Happy problem-solving!

Mr Male, Maths Department