The UKMT Senior Maths Challenge 2010

For Maths teachers all over the UK November heralds the arrival of the Senior Maths Challenge! The Senior Maths Challenge (or SMC for short) is a national mathematics competition for students studying A Levels (or equivalent qualifications, such as the Bellerbys Foundation Programme). and involves students having to answer 25 multiple-choice questions in 90 minutes.

The exam, which is set and organised by the United Kingdom Mathematics Trust (UKMT), is composed of interesting and challenging questions which are designed to test students’ analytical and problem-solving skills and is therefore a great way for our talented students to stretch themselves! For the 5th consecutive year Bellerbys College London has participated in the SMC and this year we had 33 students take part – the highest number of participants yet!

The exams are marked by the UKMT with the results sent out to schools later in the term. Students who do sufficiently well will be awarded certificates (either Bronze, Silver or Gold; depending on how well they did!) and students who do very very well will be able to take part in the 1st round of the British Maths Olympiad (BMO1), another very prestigious competition – which is even more demanding than the SMC!

As usual, I’m far too impatient to wait for the official results so I’ve marked our students’ exams already and although I won’t mention any names yet, suffice to say some of our students appear to have done very well indeed!

Students at Bellerbys London sitting the SMC

The success of this event is thanks to the much appreciated efforts of many members of staff at Bellerbys College London, without which our students would not be able to benefit from taking part in the SMC or have as much fun taking part as they do. Firstly, I would like to thank Donald Sweeney and his kitchen staff for the wonderful spread of food they provided for us! The SMC has to take place on a specific date (which this year was 4th November) and with students from many different classes wishing to take part, the exam has to be sat after lessons finish that day – in other words, during dinner time!

Therefore, so that our students don’t get too hungry or miss dinner, we serve them food whilst they take the exam! This year Donald and his team provided us with home-made pizza (which was very popular!), fish cakes, wedges, sandwiches, canapes, goujons, quiche and much, much more! And with classes finishing at 4.45 and the SMC starting at 5.15, there is also a great logistical challenge to overcome – in just half an hour our maintainance officer Joseph Carvalho has to turn three classrooms into an exam room complete with rows of desks and chairs arranged for an exam – and then have the three rooms turned back into classrooms in time for the lessons taking place there the next morning – so, thank you and well done Joseph!

Thanks are also owed to our principal Andy Quin for his support for our involvement in the SMC. Each year Andy agrees to pay the entry costs for the SMC and the British Maths Olympiad so that we can offer these events to our students for free. Andy also funds a prize each year for our highest-scoring student so that we can reward their success. I am also very grateful to my colleague Christine Barit for volunteering to stay late after school to help me run the SMC this year – her help made everything a lot easier!

But, as ever, the real star is my fellow maths teacher Clive Cubitt who has been the inspiration and mastermind behind our recent stunning success in the SMC and British Maths Olympiad, working late to help students prepare for this competition and sharing his great experience and insight into maths challenges! This year he was supported by one of our new teachers, Faissal Taheri, and between them the support they provided made a big difference to how our students performed in this competition and ensured that our recent success has continued!

Me, Dr John McD (left) and Clive Cubbitt (right)

Study at Bellerbys College

The Senior Maths Challenge

Four years ago a student approached me after lesson and asked me whether Bellerbys College London took part in any maths competitions and, if we did, could he be involved. At the time we didn’t participate in any such events but as a former A Level student myself I seemed to remember taking part in some sort of team maths challenge when I was at college, so I thought I’d try and find out if such competitions still took place. Well, that’s not strictly true – I actually asked my Head of A Level, Ms Erin Robinson if she knew of any suitable competitions and she volunteered to try and find out if any existed; which she did, and so the credit for our involvement in such events since then really belongs to Erin!

Since that day four years ago, Bellerbys College London has actively taken part in a range of extracurricular national maths competitions with very impressive success. One of our students actually came top in the whole country in one competition! This all started with our involvement in the Senior Maths Challenge (SMC) – an event which takes place across the country and involves thousands of students, and which Bellerbys College London has now entered for the fourth year running. The Senior Maths Challenge involves students sitting a ninety minute multiple choice paper made up of twenty-five questions, which range from slightly tricky questions to very challenging ones.

The exam itself takes place after school and I fully admit that when we started this I very much doubted that the prospect of staying late after school to take an extra exam in Maths would attract many students but I was very much wrong and every year we have approximately thirty students – from across all our programmes; A Level, Foundation and GCSE – taking part in the SMC.

The exam papers are handed out

This year’s competition has recently taken place, with twenty-eight students from Bellerbys London participating. The event is meant to be a light-hearted experience and so we always encourage students just to come along and give it a go, regardless of how good they think they are at maths – and for those people who don’t think that a ninety-minute multiple choice maths examination is exactly a ‘fun’ way to spend an evening there is always the added incentive that participation is something which looks good on their university application!

Brain Food!

And then there’s the food! Because the SMC takes place after school, during dinner time, the school’s kitchen staff led by our Head Chef Donald Sweeney lays on a sumptuous feast for the students taking part; this year we had spring rolls, samosas, a wide variety of sandwiches, some lovely biscuit and pork snacks which I’d never had before (but which were lovely!) and, my personal favourite, prawn parcels; all of which were served to the students by my colleague Clive Cubitt and I whilst the exam took place!

Maths teachers John and Clive

Although we encourage students just to have fun at the SMC we also want to give those students who want to take it seriously all the support and help we can provide and so, in the weeks leading up to the SMC, Clive runs a series of lessons after school and during lunch times to help prepare students for the real exam. At this stage I must say what a wonderful job Clive does and that without him our students would neither enjoy the SMC as much as they do or have had as much success as they have done. This is especially important as the SMC is just the first stage of a series of maths competitions.

Students who do well in the SMC often proceed to take part in the next stage, known as the British Maths Olympiad (BMO), which itself consists of two separate rounds. Indeed it was in the second round of the BMO that, just two years ago, one of our students came top in the entire country! And although the student in question was a very talented young mathematician who fully deserved his success (success which has continued beyond Maths competitions; he is now studying Economics at LSE) again my colleague Clive deserves substantial recognition for all the effort and support he provided throughout all those competitions.

And who knows, thanks to the talent of our students here in London – and all of Clive’s efforts – one of our students may even win this year’s competition too!

Find out more about what you can study at Bellerbys College