By Aline Nassif

aline.nassif@essnmedia.co.uk

A Croydon primary school has come seventh in the world in a global maths challenge.

Park Hill Juniors, in Stanhope Road, is celebrating an astonishing performance in a competition to mark World Maths Day.

The school's 34-strong team of five to eight-year-old "mathemagicians" beat tens of thousands of other schools in the online maths "battles" where they had to answer as many maths questions as possible in a set time.

It was an improvement on last year, where the school's score saw it come ninth in the world and first in the UK.

Last Wednesday's (March 3's) event saw more than 1.1 million pupils from 56,000 schools competing.

The school's older team of 43 nine to 13-year-olds came second in the UK and 47th in the world.

Maths teacher Simon Yearley said: "Last year we were ranked in ninth place and this year seventh.

"What is even more extraordinary is the fact that only one hour was time-tabled for the event during school time, which means most of the hard work was done in their own time at home.

"Both groups did us proud - they answered almost half a million questions between them!"

Mr Yearley gave special praise to students Tanya John, 10, and Sanjana Kannan, 8, who came top of their respective groups by answering more than 4,000 questions each.

Park Hill Juniors has a strong reputation for its innovative approach to maths to keep the kids entertained.

Last year the school organised a series of outdoor events and forensic experiments to make maths relevant to the real world.

"It is nice that a subject like maths, that isn't always seen as a favourite subject, is being championed at our school as something that can be very enjoyable and certainly incredibly important," Mr Yearley added.