King’s Ely mathematicians shine in annual competition

Talented King’s Ely students won a haul of awards in this year’s Senior Maths Challenge.

A total of 25 King’s Ely Sixth Form mathematicians entered the contest, which is organised by the UK Mathematics Trust (UKMT) and attracts more than 200,000 Senior students from across the UK every year. The King’s Ely team came home with a fantastic seven Gold awards, seven Silvers and seven Bronzes.

King’s Ely’s top scorer on the day was Kevin Chen, followed closely by Andrew Park, who has now been invited to compete in the British Mathematical Olympiad (BMO). Round one of the BMO lasts more than three hours and consists of six complex mathematical problems, for which full written solutions are required. If Andrew does well, he could be chosen to represent the UK in Romania.

Kevin Chen, Eric Lin, Kayla Wang, Carlotta Rosenthal, Michael Zhang, Yutong Liu and Alexandra Hou were all invited to sit the next stage of the UKMT Senior Maths Challenge – the Senior Kangaroo paper. Only around 6,000 of the 200,000 students who enter the first round of the competition qualify to sit the Senior Kangaroo paper, of which the top 25% receive a Merit certificate.

Kevin was the top scorer in the first round of the challenge and won a Gold certificate. In the Kangaroo round, which is the final round, his score was matched by Eric, which saw them both winning Merit certificates.

Head of Mathematics at King’s Ely Senior, Audrienne Bezzina, said: “I would like to say a huge well done to all of our mathematicians. Roughly only the top 6% of students achieve a Gold certificate, the next 13% Silver and the next 21% Bronze. From the original entrants, only one in 400 are invited to take part in the Senior Maths Challenge papers and around 11 in 400 are invited to sit the European Kangaroo papers. We are all very proud of our mathematicians’ achievements.”