Siblings at King's Ely Junior quality for Maths Olympiad – with identical scores!

Two siblings who are pupils at King’s Ely Junior have qualified for the Junior Maths Olympiad after achieving identical scores.

Eleanor and James MacGillivray (pictured) were among 50 pupils in Years 6 to 8 at King’s Ely Junior who competed in the Junior Maths Challenge in April. Despite being ill on the day, Eleanor, 13, achieved a Gold certificate and has now qualified for the Junior Maths Olympiad; and despite taking part in the challenge at least a year earlier than expected, James, 11, equalled his sister’s score and has also qualified for the Olympiad.

Head of Mathematics at King’s Ely, Audrienne Bezzina, said: “We are all really proud of Eleanor and James. They were both in the top 0.5% nationally as only around 1,200 of the highest scorers in the competition are invited to participate in the Olympiad. James’ score was particularly impressive seeing that he took the paper at least one year early. This is the first ever year that we have had two students qualifying for the Olympiad and I congratulate Eleanor and James who I know have done so much extra work at home to achieve this fantastic result.”

Over 240,000 pupils from schools across the UK took part in the Junior Maths Challenge, with roughly the top 6% achieving a Gold certificate, 13% achieving Silver and 21% achieving Bronze.

This year, 39 King’s Ely Junior pupils achieved certificates, including 7 Gold, 17 Silver and 15 Bronze. Matthew Danes, 13, Richard Garrard, 12, Rory Morgan, 13, and Ben Collier, 12, qualified for the Junior Kangaroo Maths paper which is for students who obtained a very high score in the Junior Maths Challenge but not quite high enough to qualify for the Olympiad.

Ben was only one mark off qualifying for the Olympiad. Samantha Parsons, 11, was also a Gold scorer but missed to qualify for the Kangaroo paper and Elizabeth Newman, 11, also did well to win a Silver certificate. The participants are pictured below.

Both the Junior Maths Challenge and Junior Kangaroo assessment are being held on June 13. Mrs Bezzina said: “I would like to wish all of our pupils the best of luck for their next rounds.”

King's Ely Junior is co-educational independent day and boarding school for pupils aged 7-13.