UCMAS Quiz Starts Showing On GTV

A new Mathematics quiz, known as the Universal Concept Mental Arithmetic System (UCMAS) quiz, has started showing on Ghana Television (GTV).

The show involves children relying completely on their mental abilities to answer several arithmetic questions faster than a calculator would.

It is a 13-episode programme that would run for 13 weeks and produce two winners, one each in the junior and senior categories.

The junior winner and the parent or guardian would receive an air ticket to London, while the winner of the senior category would have an all expenses paid sponsorship to compete in the world UCMAS competition in Malaysia.

The show, which is broadcast every Saturday from 9:30a.m. to 10 a.m, is sponsored by IPMC, Indomie, and Vita Milk and supported by GTV.

According to the Director of UCMAS, Ghana, Mr Girish Gurbani, the contestants are 27 children from the UCMAS learning centres across the country, who are aged five to 13.

Nine of the contestants, he said, would compete at the junior level, while 18 would compete at the senior level. The 12th and 13th weeks would present the junior and senior finals respectively.

Each episode would stage three contestants who would battle for the ticket to take part in the next stage of the competition, Mr Gurbani added.

He said a fascinating aspect of the quiz was the segment known as the IPMC challenger contest. In that segment, a viewer was invited via short code 1931 on MTN, Vodafone, Kasapa and Tigo to come with any calculating gadget and compete with the winner of each show or episode and win a laptop from IPMC.

Mr Gurbani explained that the main objective of the quiz was to exhibit the fact that learning was easy or became easier when children went through brain development programmes and gradually erased the apprehension many children had for Arithmetic.

The quiz, he said, also sought to enlighten children, teachers and parents on the fact that the brain had the capacity to solve Arithmetic problems faster than any calculating gadget.

This, he hoped, would lead them to realise that every child in Ghana had the ability to train their mental faculty and thereby have as many children that fell within age range of five to 13 trained.

Ultimately, Mr Gurbani added, this would enable a large number of Ghanaian students to be highly developed in their mental abilities and eventually snowball into the creation of an academically successful generation.