It all added up for three CHS mathematicians who have been recognised in a national academic challenge, run by Mathematical Education on Merseyside (MEM) – the Outreach branch of the University of Liverpool.
Lower Sixth pupil, Atharva has been highly commended in the “Open Challenge” for those in Year 13 and below, and Year 7 pupil Rohit achieved Merit in the “Challenge” for Year 8 pupils and below – both competing against students from the year above.
Year 10 pupil, Maham also achieved a Merit in the “Senior Challenge” open to any pupil in Y10 and below.
The first time CHS pupils have achieved this degree of success in the competition, the annual challenge runs each February and was open to all ages with each pupil at CHS given chance to participate.
MEM received entries from 93 different schools in total and only a small handful of students achieved this level of recognition.
Mr Steven Norton, CHS Head of Mathematics, said: “Congratulations to all three pupils; this is a really significant achievement which they worked incredibly hard on over the February Half Term. This is the first time I can recall it happening in my time at CHS – and now we have three winners! Well done to you all.”
Unlike other test-based Maths challenges, the MEM competition comprises a series of open-ended puzzles that are investigative in nature. Often nudging students towards new mathematical ideas, each challenge presented a problem the pupils won’t have encountered before.
Explaining the competition Mr Norton says: “Each puzzle requires a fairly lengthy written response in order to be answered adequately, and that is to say nothing of time spent on research and/or false-starts. All three students will have spent a really considerable chunk of their February half term devoted to this and given the challenges will have attracted the most able mathematicians, you can imagine how intense the competition will have been. They should be very proud.”
Each of CHS’s winners have now been invited to attend a prize-giving evening in Liverpool which includes a series of puzzles, presentation of the solutions and a virtual presentation of the prizes.
