A WESTHOLME School pupil added, subtracted and divided his way to the top after beating children from across the world in a ‘mathletics’ contest.

At just eight years old, James Hartley, from Barrow in the Ribble Valley, was top of the international mathletics leader board when he answered 72 maths questions correctly in 60 seconds.

Education experts say the fast-paced competition is taking the world by storm.

Mathletics sees hundreds of thousands of school children from 7,000 schools across the globe complete maths questions against the clock every day.

The top students are then ranked against their peers.

But with competition strong James’s champion status only lasted for a few hours until he was knocked off the top spot by a youngster from Australia.

James’s school friend Dominic Naylor, eight, also of Barrow, then tried to reclaim the top spot for the school and was hot on the heels of the leader earning him second place.

Now pupils at the school said they would continue to take part in the on-going competition in a bit to be ranked number one again.

Mathletics has been described as the next generation of learning to help youngsters enjoy maths and is centred around the national curriculum.

Westholme Association, the school’s parent teacher group, bought the subscription for the boys schools and have recently signed the girls school up to the programme.

Boys’ school headteacher Stuart Lewis said: “After hearing about the benefits of mathletics, I approached the Westholme Association who generously donated the annual subscription fee for our school.

I am thrilled that the boys have shown such enthusiasm, which is having nothing but a positive effect in their maths lessons”.