AN 11-YEAR-OLD boy who transformed his hatred for numbers into a passion has been ranked 21st in the world in a maths tournament.

The pupil at Blackburn's St Peter’s RC Primary School Filip Szary was hailed top for his year group in England after competing in a 60 second World Maths Day Championship.

He answered 89 questions in 60 seconds.

The mathletics tournament saw students aged four to 18 correctly answer as many mental arithmetic questions as they could in one minute in the world’s largest educational event.

In total 1,298,834 students from 22,785 schools and 212 countries took part in this year’s event.

Each student could play 100 games to try and earn as many points as they could to take them to the top of the leader boards.

Filip received a gold minted medal for his achievement.

He said: “About two years ago I absolutely hated maths, I much preferred English. But now maths is my favourite by miles.”

Filip, who hopes to become a scientist, added: “I’d love to invent something and study the cosmos.”

Headteacher Michael Duxbury said: “We are really proud of him. We are proud of his progress in maths. He is a good ambassador for maths in school.”

Mum Magda Barszezewska said: “It was a big surprise when he came home and told us but we are so proud.

“This can all be traced back to a conversation he had with his dad.

“He explained to him how maths is behind everything in the world and how important it is. After that, he completely fell in love with it.

“His goal now is to go to university. He has already been inspired by Professor Brian Cox.”

Filip got the top score in his age group in England, with the highest UK score from a pupil in Scotland.

The United Kingdom ranked in fifth position with pupils from Malaysia taking first place overall.

For the first time, this year the competition helped to raise money for UNICEF education programmes in Mozambique and Vietnam.