First competitions for primary school children

The honest advice for almost every family is to start with whichever one the school already does, and only go looking if the answer is none. A child sitting a paper alongside their friends in an ordinary lesson has a much better time than one entered specially.

And a low score is not information about a child. The Primary Maths Challenge is graded so that the last five questions are hard for everyone, and a nine-year-old who gets ten right has done well at something most adults would find awkward.

What a parent can usefully do at home is smaller than a competition and more valuable: twenty minutes a week of puzzles, out loud, with somebody listening to the reasoning rather than checking the answer.

The full year for every age, with each organiser named and each date checked, is on the competitions calendar.

If a competition is next month

Do nothing special. These papers are designed to be sat without preparation, and a child told it matters does worse.

If you want to do something, do one past question together, slowly, with no clock.

If a child loves it

Secondary school opens the olympiad ladder, which is set out on the junior olympiad.

A child who enjoys the puzzles usually enjoys writing them as programs, which is what maths through coding exists for.