Questions we get asked

Two rounds per academic year: one in November and one in March. Exact dates are announced around the start of each academic year, chosen to avoid major school exam periods.

$20 per student for the Home Division, $15 per student for schools.
Entries are invoiced in USD and paid by international bank transfer. Card payment for individual entries is on its way.

Any student in Grade 12 or below, anywhere. There are three papers: Grade 8, Grade 10 and Grade 12, and entry is by grade rather than by age.

You may always sit a paper above your grade if you want the challenge; a Grade 9 student may take the Grade 10 paper. You may never sit one below it.

If you're unsure, take the one for your grade. The last question or two on every paper are meant to be difficult for most students.

You can sit papers for different grades in the same round, but not more than one paper per grade.

The School Division is invigilated in the room by school staff, with additional measures at the school's discretion.

The Home Division is proctored live over Zoom by our invigilators, and you should keep your whole upper body visible on screen.

The same difficulty, the same length, the same marking and the same certificates on score.

What differs is where you sit it, who invigilates, who does the registering, what it costs, and when you sit it — School Division runs within the school day, Home Division runs after school. The two divisions are ranked separately.

No, the paper runs in an ordinary browser tab.

Any laptop or desktop with a current browser, a stable connection, and pen and rough paper. No calculators, no notes and no second devices except from the device that you will use to be on the call if you are sitting Home Division.

You'll have up to 10 minutes to reconnect and resume the paper — your answers are auto-saved, so nothing is lost. If any other technical issues arise, please contact us immediately and we will sort it out individually.

Not quite — each paper has two exam windows, and you're assigned one by division and location. If it doesn't suit you, ask to move to the other window before credentials are issued and we'll accommodate it where we can. Within your window, your own 60 minutes starts the moment you log in, so log in as close to the start as you can. The exact window will be announced when credentials are sent out.

English only for now. Translations may follow in later years.

No — dictionaries, translation tools and reference apps aren't permitted during the paper, the same as calculators and notes.

Yes. A practice paper is available for each grade: included in the fee for school entries and sent to the coordinating teacher, and available as a $2 add-on at registration for individual entries. There is also a sample paper on the website, free to anyone, which shows the format and difficulty. More resources, including past questions with solutions, are in development.

Every student in either division receives a personalised certificate, which includes certificate of participation, Merit and Distinction.

Special awards and book prizes are available for the top performers in each grade. Students with the special award are invited to write a question for the next round, for which at least one will be selected. They will be credited by name (or nickname), and receive another special award.

Question submission is open for all of the students who participated, although the publication is not guaranteed.

Within 20 days of the paper. For school entries, results go to the coordinating teacher first, so staff hear them before students do.

Not by your own cohort. Merit goes to the top 60% and Distinction to the top 20%, measured across everyone sitting that paper in that division rather than school by school, so a strong group can take a large share of them.

Students with the special award are invited to write a question for the grade's paper that they had set, whose publication is guaranteed. They will be considered in their own pool of submissions.

Any student who participated may submit a question, although the publication is not guaranteed.

Send your question, along with a worked solution, to submission@prismmaths.org.

Questions are published with your name (or nickname) the next round. This is the closest thing we have to a trophy.

If your question gets selected, and only with permission. You can also choose to remain anonymous or use a nickname if you prefer.

For a coordinating teacher, around two hours across a whole round, and 70 minutes of that is sitting in the room invigilating.

You can find out more on the Schools page.

Fill in the registration form on our site — school and coordinator details, then your roster, either typed in or uploaded from our spreadsheet template.

An invoice is emailed to you straight away, for your finance office. Pay it by international bank transfer in US dollars, quoting the invoice number in the reference field. Once the payment reaches us we send a receipt and a confirmation, and credentials follow at least 7 days before the paper.

The Schools page sets the whole sequence out step by step.

Nothing is recorded, nothing is installed on school devices, and we hold only a name, a school, a grade, a contact email and a score, which is deleted after the competition. We don't contact students directly on a school entry, everything goes through the coordinating teacher.

The full set of answers is laid out on the Schools page.

14 days before the paper. Credentials go out 7 days ahead. For schools, practice papers arrive earlier, with the confirmation email once payment is received.

If notice reaches us more than 14 days before the paper — that is, at any point up to the close of registration — you receive a full refund, minus any processing fees. Fourteen days or fewer before the paper, no refund is due.

The same rule applies to individual entries and school entries alike.

For schools: a refund is returned by international bank transfer to the account you paid from, with any bank charges on the return deducted — so the sum that reaches you is a little less than the sum invoiced. Clause 7 of the Terms and Conditions sets this out in full.

For now, all the students are given the same amount of time to complete the paper.

A name, a school, a grade, a contact email and a score. Home Division recordings are deleted 30 days after results are published. Nothing is sold or shared with third parties, and you can write to us to have an entry removed.

Multiple-entry discounts are currently not available, and each individual must be registered separately.