Certificates

UKLO offers a certificate for each candidate at each level (Advanced, Intermediate, Foundation and Breakthrough); the ‘Other’ option is more complicated (see below). The overall principle of the certificates is that schools are free to use them, and even design them, to suit their own local needs. The competition is a serious intellectual challenge for all concerned, as it pushes virtually everyone to their limits; so everyone who takes part deserves recognition and credit for their achievement. We trust schools not to abuse the system.

Awards

At each level, we offer four kinds of certificate, based on the national statistics:

• Gold – for the top 5%
• Silver – for the next 10%
• Bronze – for the next 20%
• Participation – for the remaining 65%

The percentages are approximate because we have to fix them in relation to the nearest boundary in the marks. The boundary is defined by a threshold mark which defines its lower threshold; so if the threshold is (say) 60%, a score of 59.99% would not qualify but one of 60.00% (or higher) would qualify. (We round to two decimal points.) The thresholds for the three award grades and for each difficulty level are announced each year on the page for that year’s Round 1.

Here’s an example of a certificate for a Silver award. Apart from the wording and the colour of the frame, they all look like this:

Logistics

The portal generates a pdf of certificates for all your competitors, which you then download and print out locally.  For instructions on how to download the file, go here.

Local awards

If you enter a number of candidates at a particular level, you may prefer to award your local school certificates, either instead of the national ones described above or in addition to them. Local awards reflect competitors’ performance compared with the rest of their school, so we recommend applying our 5:10:20 formula to your local totals, as shown in the marks csv that you can download from the portal. You can then produce your own local certificates showing these awards.

To do this, you need to do the following:

• Download our blank certificate.
• Edit it (using Word) once to show your school name and the year.
• Edit it again to produce a different version for each award level (Hint: to change the colour of the border to gold, silver or bronze, choose the  ‘Design’ tab, then the ‘Page border’ button over on the far right of the ribbon.) For ‘no award’ just remove ‘at the [####] level’.
• Produce a distinct page for each student, showing the student’s name, using the blank for the appropriate level.
• Print the certificates.

The ‘Other’ level

‘Other’ entries are bespoke combinations of one or more problems, so there are no national awards. However, given large enough numbers a school might devise its own internal award system.