UKMT at Tonbridge School

In the midst of GCSE practical’s and summer term tests, 4 pupils from the lower school (Jaz Stoddart, Ben Simpson, Folarin Ogunsola, and Matthew Jenkins) travelled to Tonbridge School last week to compete in the UKMT Team Maths Challenge. Below is an account of the day written by one of the attending pupils; Jaz Stoddart:

“We began our day walking to the train station from school where we bought our tickets for Tonbridge and then sat on the train writing out number sequences to get the numbers into our heads.

Once we arrived at Tonbridge station we followed Highworth School’s team who thankfully knew the route to Tonbridge School where we were shown to the sign in desk for the UKMT Team Maths Challenge.

First we were handed the group competition which was ten questions for the four of us to answer. With each question worth 6 marks the top mark being 60 we set our sights on 100%. After some concentration and deliberation we managed to get 70% which was 42 marks. We didn’t get a mention but we felt we did well.

Then we did the cross-number which is a crossword puzzle with numbers and we were split into pairs so one pair had the across clues and one pair had the down clues. We spent the full 45 minutes on it and were duly rewarded by a special mention for doing well.

After lunch we returned for the Head-to-Head where we split in to the pairs and unfortunately lost the all important points which probably cost us the place in the top 3 we wanted. We were a considerable amount off the maximum mark of 60 and we know we could have done better.

Finally there was the relay race where one pair goes to the other side of the room and alternately answer questions. We did very well on this and we got to about questions 11 of 15 so that becomes 22 out of 30 which meant we got 44 marks and the round became reasonably successful.

Overall we came 9th out of 28 which was really good because we were 7 marks off being in 4th place!”

Jaz Stoddart, Year 8