Eight-year-old Glasgow kid becomes the youngest to complete national level mental maths programme

All images by Blueprint Media/BYITC/GlasgowLive

An eight-year-old Glasgow student has proven his extraordinary abilities by becoming the youngest person in the UK to complete a national level mental arithmetic programme, recognised to be as one of the most advanced in the country.

Advik Mittal completed the British Youth International College (BYITC) Supermaths National Abacus Maths programme which involves addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, percentage, fractions, decimal arithmetic as well as Abacus maths concepts.

The young boy is a pupil at St Patrick’s Primary School. He is also a chess prodigy who has been selected to represent Scotland in the under 12s category at the forthcoming Liverpool Quadrangular International Chess Tournament.

Mittal, who joined the BYITC programme at just five-years-old, said, “I am pleased that I am the youngest person in the UK to complete the mental maths programme.

“I have enjoyed it all. The teachers are very nice and friendly and help you a lot, and I’m sure that learning Abacus mental maths has also helped me improve my abilities as a chess player.”

The whiz kid’s father, Sachin Mittal said, “Advik started playing with numbers and oved them.

“He can calculate large sums rapidly in his head without the use of a calculator and this has greatly helped his ability to learn more about numbers and develop his analytical thinking skills.

“We are very grateful to Dr Rashmi Mantri and her colleagues at BYITC for providing this brilliant opportunity for Advik to advance his knowledge and understanding of numbers I have no doubt at all that it has helped achieve success, also in chess.”

The BYITC programme has 11 levels and each of them run for three months with the candidates under the supervision of a certified teacher. The courses and the teachers are accepted under the UK’s school curriculum.

BYITC’s founder, Dr Rashmi Mantri, said, “We know that working on arithmetic problems alone can be monotonous, so we have introduced a competitive element so that students can improve their analytical skills in a more dynamic way.

“We have been delighted by Advik’s progress throughout the programme and anticipate that he will now go onto further explore his love of numbers by developing yet more sophisticated mathematical skills.

“Our overall aim is to find the next generation of mathematics prodigies, to kindle their competitive spirit, and to nurture their true potential.”