On Thursday 22nd March 2018, 4 of our talented Year 6 students: Bei Bei, Hip Hop, Toya and Victoria, along with Miss Sultan and Mr Flegg, set off to The  Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam for the FOBISIA Primary Maths Competition. This was the first time that we as a school have taken part in this event and so we were all very excited to see what it was like and how we would fare.

We had been preparing for the event for many weeks; honing our puzzle and problem solving skills, as well as our understanding of calculation methods and processes through a series of practice challenges similar to those that we thought we might have to tackle at the event.

The Thursday evening was spent settling into our hotel and resting for the next day’s activities.

On Friday, we began the event with a Maths trail, which called upon our map reading skills as we navigated a local park to find labelled bases with a question; the answer to which would lead us on to the next location. After that, we proceeded back to the host, The ABC International School’s campus to take part in a countdown round, group problem solving, a relay round and finally a house event. It was a long and tiring day, but we had lots of fun.

Saturday morning it all started again. We headed straight to the school campus this time and kicked off the day with an individual round and a challenging team puzzles round. After a break, we jumped into a music round; working out problems to discover a musical root, then compiling them together to create well-known melodies. Then was the construction round. Teams were given a set of materials to create a ramp that would propel a ball the correct distance to land in a target. We did very well at this!

It was then time to travel to the awards dinner at the school’s Early Years campus for a celebratory dinner and awards ceremony to conclude the event. We were very proud of our efforts and the spirit in which we took part in the competition. The results were called and we later found out that out of 30 schools participating from all over Asia, we came in 15th place; an amazing outcome for our first ever entry to this event.

Our team this year represented Bromsgrove impeccably well and we are all very proud of them. They have set the bar high, so we are enthusiastic now to see what can be achieved when we enter again next year.