Private School News

Four mathematical wizards from Bishop’s Stortford College fought off strong competition from thirty four other schools last week to win the Eastern regional round of the 2008 Team Maths Challenge for Year 8 and 9 pupils. In the national competition, run by the UK Mathematics Trust (UKMT), Ralph Jordan, Catriona Brickel, Kirsten Lane and Ross Gardiner had to prove their ability to work as a team as well as crack a variety of difficult numerical problems.

The thirteen year olds took an early lead after successfully solving ten questions in the first round; they were the only team to score 60 out of 60. In the second round they had to work in pairs to tackle a “cross number” puzzle with one pair working on the cross clues and the other pair figuring out the down clues. “We could only share our answers with the other pair through the teacher and we found this round harder,” said Ralph. “I think we fell to third place at this stage.” However, after a strong third round performance, involving a head to head with another school team, the College pupils began the fourth and final challenge in second place. “This final challenge was a relay race where two of us had to answer a question correctly before handing over to the other two,” explained Catriona. “I found it the most exciting challenge – very energetic and lots of fun. We won this round and were really pleased to find out that we had also finished overall winners.”

Bishop’s Stortford College will be one of thirty teams to go through to the national final which takes place on Monday 23rd June at the Camden Centre in London.

A month earlier, Ralph Jordan and Ross Gardiner, together with fellow pupil, William Rowley, had performed well in the 2008 UKMT Intermediate Maths Challenge for Year 9 to 11 pupils. This year there were 202,554 entries and the national average on the reasoning and mental agility test was 40 out of 135. All three Bishop’s Stortford College pupils exceeded the minimum score of 85 required to qualify for the next Olympiad round, with Ralph Jordan, who is still only in Year 8, setting a new College record of 110.

PHOTOGRAPHS:Eastern region winning team
Left to right: Ross Gardiner, Kirsten Lane, Catriona Brickel, Ralph Jordan