NUMBER-crunching children at Lawn Primary School took on 20,000 children from across the world to pit their mathematical wits against each other.

Every class at the school, from year one to year five, took part in the event for World Maths Day.

The school’s maths coordinator, Karen Hall, said: “The children had been practising on the computer and on World Maths Day they logged onto the website and played 60 second games.

“They played in real time against other children all over the world – in all about 20,000 of them took part.

“They absolutely loved it and thought the whole thing was brilliant. They were competing against children on the other side of the world and were getting really competitive.”

Karen said all of the children relished getting their teeth into the mathematical problems, especially 10-year-old Jack Carter, who managed to answer 8,400 questions correctly.

“Jack’s not normally in my class, but I think he is pretty good at maths normally,” she said.

“He also answered 54 questions right in a minute, that’s almost one a second which is very quick.”

Karen explained the whole idea of the day was to encourage children to get more interested in maths. We wanted children to enjoy maths.

“They love being on the computers and the best thing was they were doing maths without realising it. They children at the school who did particularly well were given certificates to mark their achievements.”

As part of World Maths Day, 2,001,570 ‘mathletes’ from 204 countries took part. Over 48 hours 452 million sums were calculated.

The international mathematical champion was Kaya G from Australia who answered 129,106 questions correctly.

For more information visit www.worldmathsday.com.