The Ted Wragg Trust held its annual Maths Challenge event this week.

The trust, which runs 16 schools across Devon, started the challenge two years ago with only a few schools competing but a brilliant eight teams took part this year. Teams came from St James School, St Luke’s Church of England School, Isca Academy, West Exe School, Cranbrook Education Campus, Matford Brook Academy, Queen Elizabeth’s School and Marine Academy Plymouth.

The competition took place at St James School in Exeter on Tuesday the 25th of June and teams of eight students went head to head to win the coveted shield. Each participating school brought along four student volunteers from Year 7 and four from Year 8 who are interested in the subject. 

West Exe School won the inaugural Maths Challenge and Queen Elizabeth’s School won last year, this year Queen Elizabeth’s triumphant again! Although it was close with a tie break between Queen Elizabeth’s and St James for first place where St James were finally pipped to the post by 6 extra digits of pie!

Overseen and organised by the wonderful staff members Josh Godfrey, Alex Pugh and Kirstie Nixon, the challenge started with the year groups working together on questions that are related to the maths syllabus based on their fundamental learning. A speed round followed where students had to complete rounds of five different tasks in five minutes each based on mathematical, outside the box, number problem solving challenges. The challenge concluded with a maths quiz.

Moira Marder, CEO of the Ted Wragg Trust said:

“I am so proud of all the students who took part in this year’s Maths Challenge. It’s great to see so many young people getting stuck into maths and always wonderful to see students from across our schools coming together.”

Kirstie Nixon, Deputy Leader of Maths at St James said:

“I was delighted to help organise the Maths Challenge and it was great to see the enthusiasm from students across the Ted Wragg trust for maths. It’s brilliant that the trust champions the subject so strongly and I know we have some excellent budding mathematicians in our schools.”