The inaugural edition of Maths Premier League (MPL 2021) has concluded after five weeks of contest, with Vadodara’s New Era Senior Secondary School taking home the Ramanujan Maths Trophy and a cash prize of ₹25,000. Middle school students from smaller cities outshone their peers from metros in this competition, with three of the four zonal winners from India announced from Ranchi, Vadodara and Tamil Nadu’s Virudhunagar district. 

MPL 2021 was organized by Countingwell, a dedicated maths learning app, as a maths competition for school students studying in classes 6th to 8th. Delhi’s Darbari Lal DAV Model School won the award for highest average score across all three classes. 

Over 60,000 students had registered to participate in the league, out of which 11,000 qualified for the tournament. In order to win and advance to later stages, students had to undergo weekly courses and participate in tests held at the end of each week. Middle school students from 11 countries participated in the tournament, including India, UK, USA, UAE, Kuwait and Bangladesh among others. Within India, students from 29 states and Union Territories participated in this edition of the MPL. 

“The overwhelming response to the first edition of Countingwell Maths Premier League corroborates our belief in competitions and contests as a powerful motivator for enhanced learning of maths. We congratulate the winners and finalists and hope that they enjoyed learning new Maths concepts and putting them to practice in weekly tests as we did in putting together this league,” said Nirmal Shah, co-founder of Countingwell.

Within India, 51% of qualifying students came from metro cities, while 37% were from tier-2 and tier-3 cities. A total of INR 50 lakh worth of prize money including several cash awards was distributed among the winning students and schools. 

In total there were 44 awards given to 4 schools and 28 students. 

Avaneesh Kaikini, a class 7 student of Mumbai’s Children’s Academy School stood third in the country in class 7. “MPL has been a great experience for me to explore various maths concepts and practice a variety of questions. I am very happy that my school gave me an opportunity to be a part of this amazing competition,” he said.

Commenting upon the nature of the competition, Baidehi Kuila, a Class 6 Student of Lakshmipat Singhania School, Rayagada said, My experience with MPL was awesome. The way the Countingwell app teaches Maths is unbelievable. In the app along with the concepts we get a number of problems to practice which improves our mathematical ability. Also the questions given in the app and during MPL matches were very good. The questions not only ask the answers but also the procedure to solve them. Hence such questions improve our conceptual clarity a lot. She stood second in the country among Class 6 students.

During the five weeks of the competition, qualifying students solved over two lakh individual maths problems in total. The finalists completed an average of 60 learning outcomes to reach the last stages of the competition. 

Countingwell’s Shah added, “Our analysis has revealed that during the course of five weeks of MPL 2021, the participating students underwent a total of 37,366 hours worth of learning. So many students willingly and voluntarily spending so much time practicing maths is a stunning achievement for the league. We are also glad that MPL 2021 succeeded in its mission to make learning maths a fun exercise for thousands of students around the world.”

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