Content Areas and Performance of Students in the Old Mutual Mathematics Olympiad in Malawi

Abstract

The Old Mutual Mathematics Olympiad (OMMO) in Malawi is a national mathematics competition open to all final year secondary school students. In this paper, we analyse the results of the preliminary round of the competition from 2015 to 2020. We developed seven content areas for the OMMO based on core elements of the Malawi secondary school mathematics curriculum. We found that the OMMO is dominated by questions on the core element Number and numeration, particularly topics like number systems, indices and logarithms, linear equations and number patterns. We also analysed the general performance of students in these areas. We found that students performed well in topics like inequalities, trigonometry and mensuration and did very poorly on proportions, sets, coordinate geometry and geometric constructions, among other topics. These findings suggest that mathematics Olympiads can help diagnose areas that are difficult for students and hence enhance the teaching and learning of Mathematics, especially in Malawi and other countries with a similar mathematics curriculum. To take care of under-represented areas, future OMMO examinations need to be structured to adequately cover all the core elements.