'On Wednesday the 23rd, our Year 12 further maths class attended a problem solving day QE school. We were presented with various problems throughout the day which taught us skills that we can apply in our A Levels and university entrance exams.

One of the tasks involved a competition where we raced against the other schools to complete as many problems as possible.

Both highcliffe teams beat the other schools, with the girls team absolutely incinerating the guys team who cheated, and therefore missed out on chocolate and problem solving books.'

- The Girls Team

'We arrived QE school and were introduced to the team that would be running the day’s event. Our first activity was an introduction into using mathematical techniques and attributes in other subjects and fields.

This was interesting as we were all able to see how maths that we were learning could be used to help us in the other A Level subjects that we are taking. After that we took place in a competition where the various school were split into teams of 4 and we had a time limit to solve as many abstract maths problems as possible in the time frame.

Our two teams from our school showed great success , in achieving the top two places in the competition, with the boys’ team achieving a far greater score than the pathetic, puny attempt of the girls’ team. Later on we were given some very difficult MAT, STEP and TMUA questions to work through together.

We ended the day with a task involving the communication of maths. Overall, it was an enjoyable experience, with also helping us in maths, and other areas of maths in our subjects.'

- The Boys Team