Eligibility
The following information was presented earlier in the Competition but may still be useful for archival use.
Student Eligibility
The Canada Jay competition is open to students in all locations, at all grade levels.
To be considered official participants and thereby qualify for awards, recognition or prizes, students and schools must follow these rules:
- Students must be in grade 8 or below as of the current school year. This is based on the Canadian K-12 system, so countries that use Year 1-13, or differently labelled year definition should identify the equivalent Canadian grade number for their competitors.
- Students must be attending school full-time either virtually or in person (elementary, middle, secondary, Cégep, or home-schooled) .
- Students must be supervised by a qualified proctor, for the entirety of the competition time period, in a school or location for conditions that the CMS has approved for officially proctored exams. See School Participation Status for more information.
- No mobile phones, calculators or other electronic devices are permitted without advance explicit written permission from the Canadian Mathematical Society. When using our online platform, the students are allowed to use a web browser device only to access the competition web application.
- The competition must be held on schedule. The 90 minute writing period must begin and end sometime between 8 AM and 8PM (0800-2000) local time on the scheduled test date (Thursday for all schools in North America, South America, Central America or in time zones covering these areas; Friday elsewhere in the world).
School Participation Status
Official participation in the CJMC can lead to awards, prizes and recognition. Therefore we expect schools or organizations to provide a Trusted Proctor who receives our materials, conducts the supervision of the students and collects and sends us their work, otherwise the students will be considered unofficial. Unofficial participants will receive their scores, but are not considered for awards or prizes.
When you log into your Teacher Portal (available by start of September) and select the CJMC for this year, your portal shows your Participation Status for this competition. This indicates if your students will be recognized as official or not. Here are the possible scenarios.
Participation Status: Unofficial (Assessment in progress)
Your school is new or expired in our system and we are assessing it for official participation. Check back in a day or two.
Explanation: If you are newly registering on our system, or if it has been some time since we last assessed your school, then when you first set up your account, we will need to do that assessment. It usually takes one or two business days.
Participation Status: Official
School is trusted to provide suitable accredited proctor.
Explanation: For the vast majority of schools, this is our assessment. If your school is a conventional public or private, full-curriculum school, in its own permanent location, staffed by government-accredited teachers, we will quickly endorse you as official.
Participation Status: Unofficial
Your school requires you to designate a qualified proctor if you want to participate officially.
Explanation: In some cases, such as home schools, tutoring centres, enrichment centres, or non-full-curriculum schools, or similar, we may require you to run unofficially unless you can put us in contact with a suitable Qualified Proctor who we vet.
Qualified Proctors:
- Can provide us a current copy of their provincial/government-issued teaching certificate
- May not be family-related to any of the students being supervised
- Communicate with us through email
There will be a link on your Portal to allow you to designate someone appropriate with whom you’ve made arrangements.
Unless and until that person is assessed, your students would participate unofficially. If that’s acceptable to you, then you don’t even need to find an qualified proctor.
Participation Status: Unofficial (Assessment in progress)
Your school has provided information about a qualified proctor (Jacob Fester). The CMS is assessing this. Check back in a few days.
Explanation: When you designate someone, we need a few days to establish contact with that person, confirm credentials and agreement to perform this role.
Participation Status: Official (via Jacob Fester)
The CMS has endorsed your designated proctor. Jacob Fester will be sent all the competition materials and will conduct the supervision.
Explanation: The person you’ve arranged with has been approved by the CMS. Your students will be supervised by this proctor and we will provide the exam materials to this person. They will in return the students’ work to us. Their participation will be considered official and therefore eligible for awards and prizes if earned.
