In 2022, the Northern Education Trust asked Emile to provide a competition timed around the Football World Cup and based on the year 4 Multiplication Tables Check (MTC) to link their schools together. What was produced was the inaugural MTC Cup!
Over 2,000 primary schools from around the UK entered the MTC Cup in a matter of 4 weeks.
The MTC Cup
The Cup had a first and second round where the first round was local/MAT leagues and the second round was a national finals.
Students all completed as many full Multiplication Tables Check assessment – 25 questions, 2-12 times tables, 6 seconds to answer laid out exactly the same as the DfE’s own test – as they could.
All students taking part were placed into league based solely on the number of correct answers given. (Wrong answers did not impact their league position at all – in order to reward effort.)
Students could see their rank and their school’s rank live in the app and online.
Students that did particularly well received certificates, trophies and outfits for their tamagotchis.
Study by the University of Manchester
A study was undertaken by Zachary Stonehouse and Ahmed Rizwan as part of their postgraduate studies.
Some of the highlights of their report included:
- The average daily score was 20.1 on the first day of the competition compared to 23.42 on the last day of the first round.
- Across the first round, the proportion of students attaining greater than or equal to 20 increased from 67.6% to 93.25% between the first and last day of the first round.
- The proportion of students attaining 25/25 over the first round was also seen to increase. On the first day, 25.71% of students got full marks, compared to 49.73% on the last day.
- Therefore, the competition had a net positive effect on student performance.
The National Spelling Competition
Following on from the success of the MTC Cup, Emile developed a similar Viking themed spelling competition with a focus on the common exception words, and statutory spellings with the competition open to key stage 1 and key stage 2.
All students taking part were placed into league based solely on the number of correct answers given. (Wrong answers did not impact their league position at all – in order to reward effort.)
Students could see their rank and their school’s rank live in the app and online.
Students that did particularly well received certificates, trophies and outfits for their tamagotchis.
Study by the University of Manchester
- Across the Spelling Competition, the 81% of students increased their effective spelling age by at least 1 year.
- The first day … saw an average score of 23.47 attained, improving consistently by on average 0.588 per day, with the average score on the final day reaching 25.21.
- Students completing at least round 5 increasing from 9.45% to 14.79%.
- of the teachers surveyed …. student recall improved on average by 4.5 out of 5, with 5 representing recall had improved ‘significantly so’, and 1 representing not at all.
Hence, this further supports the hypothesis that those students and schools committed to the competition … see significant improvements in student performance.
The National Competitions have been a huge success. Not only for the students improving recall & fluency, teachers receiving access to detailed heatmaps & knowledge gap analyses but also raising the profile of Emile in primary schools across the UK.
We are running several more competitions in 2023/24 including a key stage 1 arithmetic competition (dinosaurs and unicorns) as well as spelling and times tables again.
To become involved and to see how Emile works, please sign up to a informal online chat and demonstration of Emile.
