Junior Memory Championship™
Working with schools to promote memory skills for kids. 
Sponsored by the Learning Skills Foundation®
Teaching Year 5 & 6 Children
vital memory skills
JMC takes a rest!

After 16 successful years, the JMC is taking a rest this year while it undergoes an exciting redesign/redevelopment.  The competition will open up again in September.  Details will be posted here
The Junior Memory Championship is a national learning competition, now registering primary schools for its 16th year


Zara beats off stiff competion and wins the top prize!

Zara Letchford from Walthamstow Hall Junior School is the 2022 Junior Memory Champion.

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"The science of memory is key to helping students learn"

Neuroscientist Catharine Young - Neuroscientist and Senior Advisor for
Science and Innovation at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office
The Guardian 2015
“Memory is the first stage of learning"

Good luck with the championship this year.

Professor Sue Gathercole OBE, Cognitive Psychologist specialising in Memory, Learning and Language. Director of MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit, University of Cambridge

Kate Hall, Headteacher of Scotholme Primary in conversation with Jonathan Hancock, Founder of the Junior Memory Championship

Highlights from the Final of the Junior Memory Championship 2019

The JMC helps children to learn

 

The JMC promotes metacognition

 

The JMC boosts confidence

 

The JMC improves organisation

Headteacher Update
Teaching Memory Skills
“The latest primary national curriculum requires children to retain facts and figures about humanities, know all their times tables, recall technical terminology about English, learn new languages, master complex calculation methods – and sit formal tests in which they have to work independently and perform under pressure.”
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Improved Memory Skills raise test scores
“All the children made at least four average point score (APS) progress, while 80% of them made more than four APS progress and that is across reading, writing and maths.” 

Ashley Winters, Headteacher of Brownmead Academy, Birmingham
"Memory Skills may soon be king" by Richard Vaughan featuring the Junior Memory Championship.  Issue date 16th November 2012. Click the image to see the content

"Memory Tricks and Techniques to boost Students' Learning"

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Guardian Teachers Network
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Innovate My School
Memory strategies: Helping children learn to learn
“As a Primary school teacher, I’m increasingly aware of the vast amount of information and the wide range of skills that today’s children need to remember. And whatever the subject, exercise or activity we’re doing, I’m always on the lookout for one particular breakthrough moment: the point when a pupil stops talking about what they’re going to remember and starts telling me how they’re going to remember it.”
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What is the Junior Memory Championship?

The Junior Memory Championship is a pioneering educational project from The Learning Skills Foundation®.

Now going into its eleventh year, the competition promotes memory techniques in schools, working with teachers to introduce pupils to the benefits of powerful learning strategies.

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Toby Hood from Alleyn’s Junior School,  the new Junior Memory Champion 2021.
Sophia Smith from Walthamstow Hall who came third
Due to the coronavirus pandemic, this year’s Final was again a virtual event. The children’s performances were as impressive as ever. 
What Teachers are saying:

“We have been taking part in the JMC for several years now and feel our children benefit enormously from the experience. They enjoy the different learning styles they are introduced to and love pitting their improved memories against each other! The children use the memory techniques in their SATS preparation and day to day lessons. Their confidence as learners improves as does their general resilience.”
Kim Sissons Bolton-Le-Sands


“Quote from experience of running Memory Challenge for first time.  Developing and practising the memory strategies over time, demonstrated to our girls how exercising their memory, like a muscle, made it fit for effective learning and efficient recall of what they learn.”
Grace Wakelin,
Learning Enhancement
Redmaids’ High Junior School


“The JMC resources and techniques have been really helpful, and children and staff have both enjoyed using them. The lessons are really clear, well-structured and easy to use. The children have really taken on board the idea that our memory is something that can be trained and improved, just like our reading and writing skills, for example. They are excited about the possibilities this opens up to them.”
Abigail Johnson, Year 6 Teacher, Gospel Oak School


"The Junior Memory Championships have been an invaluable tool in helping our year sixes learn techniques to remember knowledge and concepts, and to increase their memory skills.  It has been very successful and we look forward to implementing the program next year."
Janet Roberts, Yardley Primary School


"Our pupils enjoyed being more creative in their memorising skills and learning about the different techniques to remember words and numbers in a short space of time.  Pupils particularly found the learning of names and faces useful and have applied this in their Science and History learning.  The competition element of the JMC gave the pupils a real buzz and they were thrilled when two of them got through to the finals!  A great opportunity.  Thank you."
Jane Stonebridge, North Ealing Primary School

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Could you remember 34 random numbers, 35 words in precise order, and achieve a perfect 40 out of 40 on a names and faces test - each feat achieved after just 5 minutes of study? 

This is what was achieved by the winner of this year’s Junior Memory Championship.

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