A class of Primary 4-7 pupils from Woodmuir Primary School in the village of Breich, West Lothian have emerged as Scottish champions in a special online maths contest, organised across the country by education technology social enterprise Sumdog.
Pupils from the winning class this week visited the Scottish Parliament to be presented with their winners’ trophy by Deputy First Minister and Cabinet Secretary for Education and Skills John Swinney.
The Sumdog maths contest took place to coincide with the inaugural Maths Week Scotland, a Scottish Government-led initiative running from the 11th to the 17th September with the aim of helping everyone in Scotland to see maths positively.
With the contest running from the 8th to the 14th September, pupils taking part worked together as a class to answer correctly up to 1,000 maths questions each, using Sumdog’s innovative online game-based learning system. P4-7 pupils from Woodmuir Primary School scooped the top prize with a class average 943 out of 1,000 maths questions correctly answered.
Overall, more than 850 schools throughout Scotland entered the contest with around 55,000 pupils from around 2,500 classes actively taking part. Over the week-long duration of the contest, a total of 16.8 million maths questions were answered, 14.2 million or 82% of them correctly.
Maths Week Scotland was created as one of a series of recommendations of the Making Maths Count group, an expert group which was set up to consider how to encourage greater enthusiasm for maths amongst children and young people, their parents and carers and the wider public. Modelled on Maths Week Ireland, which has been running annually since 2007, the Making Maths Count group recommended the creation of Maths Week Scotland as one of a series of measures designed to transform public attitudes to maths.
Sumdog is a game-based learning system specifically designed to improve skills and attainment in maths and literacy and carefully aligned to the Curriculum for Excellence. It has proven success in addressing educational attainment in pupils from the most deprived backgrounds and today is regularly used in half of all Scottish schools.
Sumdog recently secured £1.4 million in funding from Nesta Impact Investments and the Scottish Investment Bank to help advance its core mission to help close the attainment gap between children from the least and most deprived backgrounds. Supported by this investment, the Edinburgh-based social enterprise aims to have helped 15 million children across the UK and the United States to improve their attainment in maths and English learning by 2022.
Presenting Primary 7 pupils from Woodmuir Park Primary School with their winning trophy, John Swinney, Deputy First Minister and Cabinet Secretary for Education and Skills, said: “The huge number of schools and pupils who took part in the Sumdog competition throughout Maths Week Scotland is very encouraging and clearly illustrates the great fun and sense of achievement that can be had through maths challenges.
“Raising awareness about the importance and relevance of maths is vital as it is a significant feature of all aspects of our lives and helps us to make sense of a world increasingly underpinned by science, technology and engineering. I would like to congratulate all those who took part in the competition, and particularly Woodmuir Primary School for their impressive result.”
Woodmuir Primary School Head Teacher Nicola Hamilton said: “Our Primary 4-7 pupils are absolutely delighted to have won the Sumdog maths contest. For some of them to get the opportunity to come along to the Scottish Parliament to be presented with their trophy by Mr Swinney is particularly special – and to visit the Sumdog offices too. They really enjoyed the experience of working together as a class. Considering how many pupils, classes and schools across Scotland took part, it’s a fantastic achievement for them to have won this trophy. We are really proud of them.”
Sumdog CEO Andrew Hall said: “We were really pleased to be able to help make the inaugural Maths Week Scotland such a great success by organising this special Scotland-wide Sumdog maths contest. A key purpose of Maths Week Scotland and Making Maths Count is to encourage greater enthusiasm for maths learning. Through wider use of our games-based learning system, Sumdog’s aim is to show that it is possible to make real and measurable improvements in maths attainment while making maths learning fun.
“We’ve been really impressed by the huge number of pupils right across Scotland who took part in the Maths Week Scotland Sumdog contest. On behalf of everyone at Sumdog, I’d like to congratulate all P4-7 pupils at Woodmuir Primary School on being crowned Scottish champions. We’re also really grateful to Mr Swinney for being able to meet some of the winning pupils, to present them with their trophy and congratulate them personally on their win.”
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