A group of Saudi children, aged seven to 10, will travel next week to Malaysia to compete in the 15th Annual UCMAS Abacus and Mental Arithmetic International Competition.

This will be the first time that Future Experts Center, a Jeddah-based training and vocational center, will be participating in such an international event.

Thirty students from Jeddah, Riyadh, Jubail and Dammam will compete among 5,000 international competitors worldwide.

The competition, which takes place on Sunday, will challenge students to solve 150 problems in only eight minutes.

“It’s the first time for Saudi children to participate in the international competition,” said Laila Al-Mutairy, Future Experts public relations manager. “This program helps in developing the child’s concentration level, time management and give extra skills.”

The Universal Concept Mental Arithmetic System (UCMAS) is a mental educational program that builds the ability to calculate with speed and accuracy. The program is for children aged four to 14 years.

Mohammed Rafee, a post moderator for UCMAS Malaysia, who came to Saudi Arabia to implement this program, told Arab News that they have made arrangements to implement UCMAS all over the Kingdom.

“This is how we came to cooperate with Future Experts Center in Jeddah,” he said. “We initially go to schools, introduce the program to schools and then we select teachers and approach students to train them.”

Ahmed Toukan, a general supervisor at UCMAS Saudi Arabia, said that this program deals with mental arithmetic.

“We teach the children how to use the abacus, a calculating tool used primarily by Asians for performing arithmetic,” said Toukan. “After three months of teaching abacus we then teach them how to use these methods mentally.”

Samira Al-Muna’ay, the mother of a competition participant, said that her son, Ahmed Othman, received UCMAS training six months ago.

“The program is great. My son is 11-years-old and he developed a better sense of time and faster calculating abilities,” she said.

Othman said he was thrilled to be traveling to Malaysia for this event.

“This program developed my memorizing skills,” he said.