Olympiads

Preparation for school olympiads — problems that reward reasoning rather than recall, paced backwards from the exam date.

Covers

Class 3
Class 4
Class 5
Class 6
Class 7
Class 8
Class 9
Class 10

Olympiad questions are not harder versions of school questions. They are a different kind of question: usually solvable with syllabus knowledge, but requiring the child to notice which piece of that knowledge applies. That is a distinct skill, and it is trainable.

What preparation actually involves

Most of the work is not learning new content. It is building the habit of looking at an unfamiliar problem without freezing — trying a small case, drawing something, testing whether a pattern holds. A child who has done this fifty times behaves very differently in the exam hall from one who has done it twice.

Practice is therefore weighted towards problems the child has not seen the shape of before, with hints that open up the approach rather than giving the step away.

Scheduling

Because the date is fixed, sessions are paced backwards from it, with earlier topics revisited at widening intervals. Reviewing something five times across five weeks beats five times in one sitting by a wide margin — this is the best-evidenced result in the whole of learning science, and it is the main reason a schedule beats a syllabus checklist.

Who this suits

Children already comfortable with their year's material who want something that stretches them. It is a poor fit for a child currently struggling with the school syllabus — the prerequisite gaps should be closed first, and the board pages are the right place to start.