YOUNGSTERS at Tregoze Primary School have been crowned the brainiest in Swindon after winning the regional semi-finals of a national maths competition.

The four top mathematicians from the school went head to head with pupils from Ferndale Community Primary School and Goddard Primary School in the Swindon semi-finals of the competition, held at Explore Learning last week. They spent two hours trying their hand at a number of maths and problem-solving activities as part of the national competition to find Britain’s best brain.

Laura Stoneham, a teaching assistant with Tregoze who attended the competition with the children, said: “The children said they were very pleased with their success and it was great to be able to use their maths skills in the outside world.

“The children did very well and all four children are an asset to Tregoze and should be very proud of themselves.”

Following the semi-final, Explore Learning, which provides maths and English tuition for five- to 14-year-olds, sent the scores to their head office, and the five best teams from across the country will then go head-to-head in a grand final, at Cambridge University.

Although this time round none of the Swindon schools made it into the final, Lauren Webb, assistant director at Explore Learning, praised the achievements of all the children who took part.

She said: “Sadly, they did not make it through to the Grand Final, but they all did a spectacular job to get to the point that they did and we were very proud of all the schools that took part.

“They did a great job – all the teams were neck and neck right up until the final 10 seconds.

“They had all noticed two or three of the points that they needed to and then on my final loop of the schools, Tregoze noticed the final point which gave them the extra points that they needed in order to win.”

The maths tests the children had to complete revolved around problem solving and logic skills and tried the children in a number of different ways. The children used coloured dice before thinking about what they could see and the patterns they could draw to create a general formula.

Lauren said: “The tests were all problem solving and maths, which is particularly important since they have changed the curriculum to focus more on problem solving and there may in the future be a problem solving paper in Year 6 SATs.

“All the children did exceptionally well and it was great to welcome them to Explore Learning.”