Does everyone from my class have to participate? Is there a minimum number of people that must be registered from every school in order for the registration to be processed?

In short, not everyone from your class needs to participate, and there is no minimum participation rate. However, you do have a number of options to consider:

1. Administer the contests during class time to those who are interested. While the contest is administered, an alternate worksheet can be provided to those students not taking the contest so that everyone in the class is quietly working on math.
2. Administer the contest during lunch time or after school. For the latter case, you'd need to inform the parents to pick up their child later than usual. A standard classroom may be too noisy at lunch to administer the contest, so the library or a multi-purpose room may be used. In that case, students from all grades can do the contest at the same time.

Is there an online version of the Young Years Program contests which my students can do instead?

Currently, we are still developing a secure system for handling an online competition of any kind. Hence, we cannot provide an online version of the Young Years Program contests for the 2017-2018 school year.

I have a number of outstanding students in my class. Is it suggested to register them a grade or two above their current grade level for these contests?

What's an appropriate score on your contests?

This is a difficult question to answer, as it depends on which contest during the school year we are talking about. Generally, however, we want to keep as many students above the $50\%$ mark as possible, but only have the best students getting perfect scores. You should expect an average score of around $70\%$ to $75\%$. A mark of $90\%$ would be absolutely superb on our contests!

How can your contests be used as an educational tool?

Some of our contests only focus on specific concepts. Teachers can either use those contests to introduce a topic or as a challenging worksheet for the sake of class discussion afterwards. When we mean "introduce a topic," we mean that our problems will build from very basic concepts that the students should know from the previous grade to more and more difficult concepts, as the problems progress. This way, students are encouraged to discover some of the ideas and patterns themselves, which is in line with our inquiry-based philosophy. Some of the other contests contain diverse topics, which can facilitate classroom activities based on these problems afterwards. Some of our solutions will offer extensions or ideas on how to turn our problems into classroom activities. We believe that everyone has something to learn from our competitions.

I'm a parent, and my school doesn't seem to be able to offer this contest. Is there any way for me to register my child for this contest?

Yes! You can ask another school in your area to host the contest for your child. However, you will need to arrange the transportation to and from the venue, and other schools are not obligated to provide accommodations for your child. This is the same if your child is homeschooled.