What Is the AMC (Australian Mathematics Competition)?

The Australian Mathematics Competition (AMC) is one of the largest and longest-running school maths competitions in the world, run each year by the Australian Maths Trust (AMT). Unlike NAPLAN or the OC and Selective tests, it isn't an entry or placement exam — it's a competition that rewards mathematical problem-solving and creative thinking, and it's sat by hundreds of thousands of students across Australia and overseas.

Who can enter, and when?

The AMC is open to any student whose school registers for it (many schools run it, and some parents enter privately). It's held once a year, usually around July–August — check the Australian Maths Trust website for the current year's date.

The AMC divisions

Rather than a separate paper for every year, students sit one of five papers grouped by age:

• Middle Primary — Years 3–4
• Upper Primary — Years 5–6
• Junior — Years 7–8
• Intermediate — Years 9–10
• Senior — Years 11–12

Everyone in the same division sits the same paper, so a Year 5 and a Year 6 student both take the Upper Primary paper.

What does the paper look like?

Each paper has 30 questions and runs for around 60–75 minutes:

• Questions 1–25 are multiple choice (five options).
• Questions 26–30 require an integer answer from 0 to 999 — no options to choose from.

The difficulty ramps up steeply: the early questions are approachable, while the last few are genuinely hard — a clear step above typical school or even Selective-level questions.

What does the AMC actually test?

This is the key difference from school exams. The AMC is not tied to the year-level curriculum. It rewards insight — spotting the clever step, not grinding through a memorised procedure. Questions draw on problem-solving techniques like working backwards, casework, looking for patterns, counting arguments, and spatial reasoning. A student can do very well without having "covered" the topic at school, and struggle if they only know how to follow set methods.

What does an AMC question look like?

Here's a taste — an Upper Primary–style problem that rewards a clever observation rather than a memorised method:

Q. A farmyard has chickens and cows — 10 animals in all, with 26 legs between them. How many cows are there?

Insight: imagine every animal were a chicken (2 legs each). Every cow you swap in adds 2 extra legs — so the "extra" legs reveal the number of cows.
Method: 10 animals as chickens = 20 legs. There are 26 − 20 = 6 extra legs, and each cow adds 2, so 6 ÷ 2 = 3 cows.
Check: 3 cows (12 legs) + 7 chickens (14 legs) = 26 legs across 10 animals. ✓

Notice there was no formula to recall — the unlock was the assumption ("what if they were all chickens?"). That's the AMC in miniature. For more, see AMC sample questions with worked solutions.

How do scoring and awards work?

Scoring is weighted — the harder, later questions are worth more marks — so the competition rewards depth, not just speed on the easy questions. Results come back as a score plus a certificate, with tiers that typically include Participation, Proficiency, Credit, Distinction and High Distinction, and top-performer Prizes and Medals. Students also see how they compare with others in their year and region.

How can my child prepare?

Because the AMC is about problem-solving rather than curriculum coverage, the best preparation is lots of varied problems at the right difficulty, with explanations that teach the method — not just the answer. Working through the harder questions slowly, and learning to recognise which technique fits, matters far more than rushing.

PrepPath offers AMC-style practice across the Middle Primary, Upper Primary, Junior and Intermediate divisions (Years 3–10): full 30-question mock papers with a genuine difficulty ramp, plus a one-problem-at-a-time practice mode with step-by-step hints when your child is stuck. Every question is explained in three layers — the key insight, the full method, and a sanity check — and a mastery map shows which problem-solving techniques are strong and which need work. Students who are also sitting the Selective test or OC test will find the reasoning skills carry across directly.

PrepPath is an independent educational platform and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or associated with the Australian Maths Trust (AMT). "AMC" and "Australian Mathematics Competition" are used here for description only. PrepPath's practice questions are original, AMC-style material — they are not real AMC papers. Always check the official Australian Maths Trust website for current competition dates, rules and registration.