Numbers add up for St Louise School shines in contest
Pupils at an East Kilbride primary school certainly proved to have a head for figures after being named Scottish maths champions.
The primary seven class at St Louise Primary won a nationwide online maths contest organised by education technology platform Sumdog to mark this year’s Maths Week Scotland – beating nearly 1000 schools to take the title.
The youngsters collected their winners’ trophy from Deputy First Minister and cabinet secretary for education and skills John Swinney on a special visit to the Scottish Parliament.
Maths Week Scotland 2018 took place last month and featured events across Scotland.
St Louise Primary came out on top with a class average score of 916 – eight points ahead of their nearest rivals.
Part of their prize for winning is a six-month subscription to Sumdog, which will give students unrestricted access to the Sumdog e-learning platform.
St Louise head teacher Siobhan Mooty said: “This is only the second Sumdog contest our P7 pupils have taken part in so to have come out as Scottish champions is really fantastic.
“It was a lovely experience for them to be able to make the trip to the Scottish Parliament and to be presented with their winners’ trophy by Mr Swinney.
“I think it’s been a really valuable lesson in great teamwork and it’s also been a really fun way to develop their maths skills. Everyone at the school is really proud of their achievement.”
Youngsters from across Scotland were encouraged to take part in this year’s contest – with participating classes working together as a team to achieve the highest average number of maths questions answered correctly out of 1000.
In total, more than 5600 classes from across almost 960 schools – amounting to 79,000 pupils – took part.
Mr Swinney said: “With an incredible 20 million questions answered by classes across Scotland during this year’s Maths Week, the pupils of St Louise Primary School should be particularly proud of their achievement.”
Sumdog CEO Andrew Hall said: “I’m really grateful to Mr Swinney for presenting the winners’ trophy and really impressed with the P7 pupils of St Louise Primary School for the maths ability they’ve shown to come out as national winners in only their second ever Sumdog contest. Congratulations to all of them.”