Entering my teenager in a local/national maths competition

BucksLady

I would be very wary of steering a child down such a route. My feeling is that if a child loved a subject (whatever it is) that much, they would be looking for competitions to enter themselves. Maybe by researching online or perhaps by asking their teacher/parents directly.

enthusiasticsaver

geek84 wrote: »

Hi Folks

My daughter who has just finished year 10 has always seemed to have good maths skills and I am thinking of entering her in a local/regional maths competition.

Can anyone suggest any popular competitions in which I can enter her?

Thanks

If she is good at maths she will be entered by her school for maths events. Further Maths Team Challenges, Gifted and Talented workshops and Maths Feasts. All these are organised through the schools.

Have you checked out the Royal Institution for Mathematics. They run a lot of masterclasses which take place in the summer holidays.

I would also question though whether your daughter want to enter competitions and masterclasses. If she does then fine but it is never a good idea to push her if she is reluctant.

Spendless

BucksLady wrote: »

I would be very wary of steering a child down such a route. My feeling is that if a child loved a subject (whatever it is) that much, they would be looking for competitions to enter themselves. Maybe by researching online or perhaps by asking their teacher/parents directly.

Not necessarily. A child may not look for such a thing because they are completely unaware that it exists. I didn't know until this thread that there were individual maths comps. I've seen them like an earlier poster via schools by invite only.

I too have one competitive child and one who isn't. The competitive one has more drive definitely that is now going into things not directly connected to the subject she excels in, purely because of the buzz got from winning and even if they lose (or don't place) this is where the learning comes from.

The other child lacks direction and focus because they don't have the same competitive streak.

Competition is not a bad thing!

geek84

Hi Folks

Many thanks indeed for your responses. I've had a chat with my daughter who has also spoke to a few friends from school. Apparently, the school does enter it's students in to the national maths challenge but it's at the discretion of the maths teachers.

So, we have decided to wait until next academic year to see if my daughter gets selected.

thorsoak

Whilst I understand that you want your daughter to do as well as possible, she is a maturing young woman who should be allowed to set her own targets. The fact that both of you have agreed to let her school make the decisions is a very sensible one. They have experience of more than one teenager.

geek84

Thanks - that is why we decided to take this decision.

theoretica

One significant benefit of maths competitions, in my experience, is that the questions are more interesting than normal school ones. Of course there are other ways of getting interesting questions (she might enjoy looking at some past papers).

I found the maths challenges and olympiad to be fun and unstressful as the format was familiarly that of a test, but I didn't really care about my result - they felt far less personal and putting me on the spot than sports or performance competitions/auditions.

silverwhistle

Quizzical_Squirrel wrote: »

I'm not sure it's a bad thing to be pushed.

I am. At the age of nearly 11 I had to do a puppet show at the speech day of my international school overseas. I really, really didn't want to do it, but ended up forced to. I was so upset that I then didn't go to the recorder group recital and the choir performance, things I loved, because I was so upset. The whole thing really put me off performing until much, much later in life.

Later on in life I did some teaching, and my experience made me a lot more aware of kids' reluctance to 'perform' in class.