STAR COLLEGE recently held their annual Horizon Mathematics Awards Ceremony which commemorates the top achievers in the Horizon Mathematics Competition for their exceptional mathematical ability.
The competition was initiated in 2002 and has been running successfully each year. This year’s competition followed a two round formulae. The first round took place at the individual schools. The top students who made 50 per cent or above from each school were then invited through to the second round at Star College in Westville. The second round consisted of a multiple choice questionnaire and the participants had 75 minutes to complete the test.
The first Durban round accommodated over 4000 pupils, from approximately 59 schools, with over 1200 pupils being eligible to write the second round. Pupils from 33 schools in the second round from grade 5, 6 and 7 reached the Top 200. Nationally over 23000 pupils entered from Pretoria, Cape Town, Johannesburg and Durban.
All of the top 200 pupils received a certificate and token for their achievement sponsored by Gem Sports and Alert Stationers and the top 50 pupils also received a “Mathletes t-shirt”. The first student of each grade received a Maths dictionary sponsored by Adams and a board game. The first 10 also received fabulous prizes which included third place – a Samsung Galaxy Tab 3 and second place a Laptop, both sponsored by Nashua Pinetown and the winner received an iPad sponsored by Gem Schoolwear.
Lloyd Geddie from Manor Gardens Primary School was the top pupil in Grade 6, he was also the top grade 5 pupil in 2013. It was an extremely close call between Glenwood Prep’s Ethan Buchanan and Manor Gardens’ Nicholas Hardman, both in Grade 7 but it was Nicholas who took the honours. Ethan achieved 15th place last year and Nicholas came 13th last year but this year saw Nicholas as the top achiever nationally and Ethan second nationally.
Top teacher awards were handed to Mrs Sibson from Manor Gardens and Mrs Tarryn Locke from Glenwood for their dedication to Maths. Manor Gardens won the overall award for having achieved the most numbers of pupils in the top 200 combined with the highest achievements.
