The past few weeks have been filled with mathematical excitement – we have had challenges and competitions galore! This is something that the Maths faculty prides itself on at St. Anthony’s; we understand the importance of giving our boys an enriching experience of Maths, which involves the joys elicited from logic puzzles, challenges and team competitions.
Year on year, the results speak for themselves. Each year, the boys reach new heights in the successes achieved. The outcome of the United Kingdom Mathematical Trust (UKMT) Junior Mathematical Challenge 2024, which took place on 25th April gave us much to celebrate: One of our star Mathematicians in Year 6 achieved full marks and gained himself an invitation to the Junior Olympiad! In addition to that we had our highest percentage of invitation to the follow-on round of the Junior Kangaroo too.
Earlier in the Term, we had six boys from Year 5 participate in the UKMT primary Team Challenge at Wetherby Senior; it was a fantastic opportunity for them to work together as a team against other Year 5 pupils from schools across London. Lorcan and Sebastian beautifully articulated their experience to the whole school during assembly – they cannot wait to have another opportunity!
Another Team competition took place a few weeks ago with four teams comprising of four boys from Years 5 and 6. The area heats for the National Mathematics Championship took place at UCS Junior with our boys competing against twelve other teams from schools across the North-West of London. I was incredibly proud of all the teamwork and the efforts made in light of some rather fiendish questions. Impressively, one of our teams came in second place automatically going through to the Semi-Finals. We were further notified of a second one of our teams qualifying for the Semi-Finals which will take place online next month. Let’s see if either one of our teams can match the success of our team last year, who made it to the Finals at the University of Oxford.
Our most recent competition saw four Year 8 boys participating in the relaunch of the UKMT Team Challenge (TMC) at Tiffin School in Kingston. The boys had a full day competing against 22 teams of Year 8 and 9 boys and girls from schools within the region. The day comprised of four rounds with a range of incredibly engaging and enjoyable tasks that challenged the most able of our mathematicians. It was incredibly enjoyable and hearing the boys’ reflection and experience of it during our Maths assembly means that we will certainly be looking forward to participating next year.
As ever, I am so proud of all the Mathematical achievements of our boys at St. Anthony’s. We have a few exciting challenges still in the pipeline before the academic year is over, so stay tuned!
Nada El-Mufti
Head of Maths
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