THE most that many primary school children know about maths is calculating how much their pocket money is due to go up.

But these super-scientists from Wolvercote Primary School won a county-wide competition to create their own mathematical experiment.

Year sixes Jacob Thornhill, Holly De-Lance Holmes and Nick Lang not only learnt the basics of probability theory, they then carried out an experiment to test how well others grasped the science, which they titled Do People Understand Probability?

They presented their findings at the final of the Oxfordshire Big Science Event 2017 in Witney on July 6 and were crowned the winners.

Nick said afterwards: "I just can’t quite believe it – it's like a dream. I'm definitely going to do more science after this."

Holly added: "It’s amazing – it feels kind of special because we’ve won for the whole school."

The young scientists not only won pride of place, they also won £1,000 worth of science-themed playground equipment for their school.

The Big Science Event asks primary school children to create their own science experiment or investigation and present their findings to a panel of judges.

Other experiments in this year's competition included ‘Do younger children have more taste buds than older children?’ and’ ‘Stressy SATs – does music help you relax?’

The aim of the competition, run by Science Oxford, is for the children to have fun with science while learning about the experimental process.

The initiative has grown from 17 schools and 2,000 children participating in 2010 to 44 schools and more than 6,000 children in 2017.

After several months of in-school judging, 12 teams of children aged from six to 11 were this year shortlisted to take part in the final.

And on July 6, in a ceremony at Abbotts Diabetes Care in Witney, each team gave presentations, answered questions and displayed posters illustrating their findings.

Judge Steve Burgess said: "Choosing a winner was extremely difficult as all the schools did great presentations.

"What we loved about the Wolvercote pupils was their enthusiasm, knowledge and excellent presentation skills – they talked clearly about their probability experiment and the discoveries they made."

Science Oxford head of education Cathy Sturrock added: "We’ve been extremely impressed by the talented young school scientists taking part.

"The quality of presentations has been better than ever and it was very difficult to choose a winner.

"Watching the children getting excited about science, their experiments and findings and thinking like scientists is so rewarding and we look forward to supporting this initiative for many more years to come."