11/05/2018

IMPA and Nova Iguaçu will host a pilot Olympics for 4th and 5th grade students.

IMPA (Institute for Pure and Applied Mathematics) has signed a technical cooperation agreement with the Municipality of Nova Iguaçu to launch, as a pilot project, a Mathematics Olympiad for 4th and 5th grade students in the municipality. Currently, the OBMEP (Brazilian Mathematics Olympiad for Public Schools) begins in the 6th grade in schools across the country. The document was signed at Cefet (Federal Center for Technological Education) in Nova Iguaçu by Marcelo Viana, director-general of IMPA, the city's Secretary of Education, Alex Castelar, and the president of Fenig ( Educational and Cultural Foundation of Nova Iguaçu ), Miguel Ribeiro.

Nova Iguaçu is promoting the Municipal Year of Mathematics, a series of initiatives to encourage the popularization of the discipline, with the support of IMPA. “We made the strategic decision to place Mathematics and Portuguese in a prominent role in education, to remove Brazil from a major bottleneck. Mathematics is behind everything,” said Castelar. “My visit is merely a corollary of this great theorem that Nova Iguaçu is carrying out,” stated Viana.

The director of IMPA presented the lecture “Mathematics: Citizenship and Development” to approximately 130 people, mostly undergraduate students from the Engineering courses at Cefet. He displayed a graph from PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment, OECD) showing Brazil among the worst countries in the world in terms of exposure to mathematics, according to the 15-year-old students themselves who take the test. “Unfortunately, our culture does not prioritize mathematics, and this has important consequences for our education. Only 4% of students reach the end of high school with the level of knowledge necessary to pursue a career in STEM fields. This requires action from all of us.”

He also spoke about OBMEP and its programs and the importance of awards. “Mathematics is very inexpensive. With a little effort, it can completely change the reality of an underprivileged region. We see the impact that an award has: it tells boys and girls that they are good, and they become convinced of it! A medal or honorable mention changes the self-esteem and performance of these young people,” said Marcelo Viana.

The Municipal Mathematics Olympiad in Nova Iguaçu for 4th and 5th grade students will be held in the second semester of 2018 and is being organized in collaboration with IMPA.