NRICH Live Problems

Latest Primary Features on NRICH

Latest Secondary Features on NRICH

NRICH Teacher Inspiration Programme 2016/17

Primary Professional Development - Tell us what you think!

Hello Everyone!

New publication dates

Meet the NRICH team

Grant scheme for enriching maths teaching now open

Maths Battles

Thinking about running a Primary Maths club?

National Young Mathematicians’ Award

Spirit of Ramanujan competition for secondary students

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Welcome to our latest half termly newsletter. This edition is packed with Hidden Gems, Live Problems and a whole host of locations where you can meet up with the NRICH team this half term.

It’s NRICH’s 20th birthday and to mark the occasion we have published a few Hidden Gems – problems that may have gone unnoticed but will engage your students in mathematical thinking. We’re really looking forward to hearing back from you about how your students have responded, so please tweet your comments and photos @nrichmaths

You may have noticed that this half termly newsletter has arrived a little earlier than usual. We’ve brought our publication date further forward, in response to your feedback. We hope that the earlier date will enable many of you to embed our latest NRICH offerings into your planning for the next half term. There will also be a special edition of the newsletter next month to launch our Advent calendars for 2016.

The NRICH team has a very busy programme of events over the next few weeks. As well as our ongoing NRICH Roadshow events and professional development events for individual schools, you can also meet members of the team at these upcoming events:

2nd November – NRICH Primary MaST Day, London

7th November – Birmingham Annual SENCO and Inclusion Conference

9th November – Matrix Maths Hub

12th November – MA Primary Conference

14th November – Prince’s Teaching Institute, Crewe

16th November – Worcestershire Maths Hub

16th/17th November – Tidal Teaching Schools Alliance

18th November – Cambridge Primary Review conference, London

25th November – Norfolk Mathematics Conference

29th November – South Yorkshire Maths Hub

7th December – National Young Mathematicians’ Award Final, Cambridge

The Royal Institution (Ri) is offering UK state schools grants of up to £500 to host a maths ‘enrichment and enhancement’ activity for their teachers and students.

Funded by the Clothworkers’ Foundation, the scheme is designed to integrate maths activities (such as shows, talks and workshops) into school practice and to support teachers’ professional development.

Successful applicants will receive £500 towards any maths activity listed on the STEM Directories as long as it is held between January and July 2017.

Eligible state-funded schools, academies and FE colleges must complete the online application form by the closing date: 30 October 2016.

For more information and to apply, visit the STEM Directories website or email [log in to unmask]

"We Solve Problems" is pleased to announce that Maths Battles will start weekly training sessions at University College London on 29th October.

Information for teachers who want to start Maths Battles in their schools is available here.

A maths battle is a competition between two opposing teams. Similar to sport activities, maths battles consist of weekly training sessions and regular competitions ("battles") which are held every half term.''

If you’re thinking about running a Primary school Maths club, or want ideas to reinvigorate your existing maths club, then why not visit Count On Us Maths? This new website offers a wealth of ideas for Primary school Maths clubs and is supported by the Mayor’s Fund for London. It features inspirational case studies about Maths clubs and free resources for your own club.

NRICH has worked with Explore Learning since 2010 to hold the annual National Young Mathematicians’ Awards. Primary schools are invited to enter a team of four children (two boys and two girls) from Year 6 or below, and teams are judged on how well they use their problem-solving skills to think like mathematicians and how well they work as a team. The competition consists of three rounds, the first being a regional knock-out on 8, 9 or 10 November, with winners going through to the semi finals to win a place in the final, held at NRICH HQ in Cambridge. For more information about how to enter, please see the Explore Learning website. If you would like to try out some of the past challenges with your pupils, take a look at this feature.

If your students enjoy solving creative maths challenges then they might be interested in the inaugural Spirit of Ramanujan Talent Initiative. Expii, in conjunction with the team behind the film “The Man Who Knew Infinity”, have launched the new competition which ‘seeks to discover mathematical talent from around the world, through creative challenges.’ The organisation offers funding for students as they progress through the process, supported by the Templeton World Charity Foundation. The closing date for the first round of the competition is December 1st 2016.

How about encouraging your students to submit solutions to our latest Live Problems? We always welcome solutions to our Live Problems, and we aim to publish some of the best ones. Have you thought of sharing these with your classes? Live problems are linked from our Primary and Secondary home pages.

Early Year practitioners, do take a look at our new Early Years activity, called Show Me, which encourages children to show you numbers in different ways. Scroll down our Early Years Foundation Stage page to the ‘Recently Published’ section in order to find it.

Primary teachers, have you seen our latest feature, Hidden Gems? To celebrate NRICH’s 20th birthday, we have brought together tasks from the website that you might not have come across before. The chosen tasks might have gone unnoticed because they are very recently published, or conversely because they are quite old, or even because they are not so closely linked to the curriculum. However, all are rich activities that will intrigue your learners and encourage them to think mathematically.

To celebrate NRICH's 20th birthday, we've taken a look back in the archives and dusted off some problems from the early days, freshened them up, and added some new ideas. The problems invite students to explore, conjecture and generalise, and offer opportunities of gaining new insights along the way. We hope your students will enjoy working on these hidden treasures! The problems can be found here.

Do encourage your students to submit their solutions to the live problems, and we will publish a selection in December.

Don't forget to check out the Recently Solved Problems to see if your students' solutions to our Angles and Polygons feature have been published.

This year we are running a free three-day professional development programme for teachers of mathematics at Key Stages 3, 4 and 5. This exciting opportunity includes three linked full-day events over the 2016/17 school year, on 13 January, 21 March and 11 July 2017.


The programme aims to support mathematics teachers who are committed to nurturing confident, resourceful and enthusiastic learners. We will explore effective strategies to:

Work with free, high-quality, engaging resources to meet the key aims of the new curriculum.

Support and develop your students' mathematical confidence, resilience, inquiry and reasoning.

Implement Ofsted's recommendation to increase problem-solving across the curriculum.

Thanks to generous support from Trinity College, University of Cambridge, we can offer free places to KS3, 4 and 5 mathematics teachers at maintained sector schools/colleges in the UK. For more information and to book places see here.

We would like to ask for your input about the factors you consider when looking for, or booking, professional development. This will help us in reviewing our current programmes and planning new content to develop. So please click here to answer six brief questions and give us the benefit of your thoughts.