A FORMER Bolton pupil has proved she is top class when it comes to maths.

Danielle Ewing, who used to attend Church Road County Primary School in Captains Clough Road, Doffocker, has just been ranked in the top 50 of a global competition.

Danielle, aged 13, left Bolton and moved to Cambridgeshire two years ago with her mother Joanne, step-father Iain and sister Tania, now aged 16.

When she first started secondary school, she was put in one of the lower sets for maths.

But now she has proved to be a real whizz at sums.

She was initially entered by her school - Arthur Mellows Village College in Glinton, Peterborough - for the UK Maths Challenge, a multiple choice test run by the UK Mathematics Trust.

The top 4,000 pupils were then invited to attempt a maths test known as the European Kangaroo Grey Paper.

The highest 25 per cent were awarded a certificate of merit, but Danielle went one better and finished in the top 50 of the two million youngsters taking part.

The teenager, who wants to be an insurance actuary, said: "It's superb. I am always in the top one or two in my class. I just find maths easy to understand and I really enjoy it.

"I'm really proud and my family are all really proud of me too. I didn't think I had done that well. My friends are all saying I'm clever."

Lynne Webb, head of maths at the college, said: "It's lovely as she's not a boffin or someone who would boast. She was so surprised when she found out how well she had done.

"The questions are particularly challenging and to understand them in the first place is hard enough."

Danielle's grandmother Susan Smith, of Captains Clough Road, Bolton, said: "We are extremely proud of her."

Are you a brainbox too?

DANIELLE had to answer 25 questions in just one hour. Try these two to judge how you might have done:

QUESTION 1: Some positive numbers are written on the faces of a cube and at each vertex we write the number equal to the product of the numbers on the three faces adjacent to that vertex. The sum of the numbers at the vertices is 70. Then the sum of the numbers on the faces is: (a) 12; (b) 35; (c) 14; (d) 10; or (e) impossible to work out?

QUESTION 2: An ice cream van sells nine different flavours of ice cream. A large group of children gathered by the van, and each of them bought a double-scoop cone with two different flavours of ice cream. If some of the children chose the same two flavours, what is the largest possible number of children in the group. Is it: (a) 9; (b) 36; (c) 72; (d) 81; or (e) 90?

ANSWERS: Question I: (c) 14

Question 2: (b) 36.