Year 12 students Olivia and Ben, who were part of the organising team, explain more: 

A total of 13 teams of four students, from a range of primary schools, visited TGS to take part in the UKMT Primary Maths Challenge. Similar to the previous events for Years 8 and 9, the day is filled with challenging maths questions in a range of formats.

The first round was the Group Round, which involved the children working in their school groups to solve questions. It served as a warm-up round to ease the children into the event to come, whilst allowing TGS teachers and students to educate the incoming staff on the schedule for the day. 

This round was followed by the Logic Round. The students were given a single logic puzzle to solve which required 25 separate answers. 

However, the remaining two rounds were most enjoyed by our visitors. The shuttle round separated each group into pairs and required the students to only share their answers through the teacher, these answers were necessary for the other pair’s question, and so this round presented quite an interesting setup that all the children were extremely passionate about. 

The day’s last round was the famed relay round, in which children had to run across the hall to both submit an answer and collect the next pair’s question. Our sixth-formers witnessed amazing displays of speed and some teams even warmed-up with stretches in order to prepare! 

The day concluded with an award ceremony with participation awards and specific prizes for the top three teams.  Congratulations to our winning team, Amherst Primary School.

For TGS students, running the event was good preparation for running a very similar event in the Netherlands in the coming months. Following the event we shared feedback to help inform our planning for the Utrecht event. 

On the day we helped by instructing and guiding the teachers and participants through what they needed to do, whether this was how to answer the round’s questions, or marking the questions, and anything in between. We were also there to answer any questions the primary school teachers had, and help with logistics on the day.

Overall, it was a very fun day, that has made us all look forward to running the event in the Netherlands.