Students often struggle to connect math with the real world. Word problems—a combination of words, numbers, and mathematical operations—can be a perfect vehicle to take abstract numbers off the page.

The answer is – very hard. Liam Kerr, head of global marketing at 3P Learning, a mathematical software solutions company, had his team come up with three questions designed for Year 5 students.

In a recent round of job interviews, Bengaluru-based CEO Ashish Gupta did something unusual – he asked fresh Gen Z graduates an easy Class 5 math question: “If a car travels the first 60 km at 30 km/h ...