31/01/2018

IMPA signs cooperation agreement with Rondônia and the city of Rio.

The deputy director of IMPA and general coordinator of OBMEP, Claudio Landim, signed cooperation agreements this Wednesday (31) between IMPA and the Education Secretariats of the State of Rondônia and the municipality of São João da Barra (RJ). The agreements establish assistance in teaching Mathematics through OBMEP na Escola, a program aimed at Mathematics teachers in public schools. The program seeks to stimulate extracurricular activities with the use of OBMEP materials, such as tests and question banks. On average, each class has 20 students.

The signing of the agreement between IMPA and the government of Rondônia was attended by the Secretary of Education, Waldo Alves, and the State Attorney, Francisco Silveira de Aguiar. The cooperation will begin in March of this year and will benefit 50 teachers from 15 schools in Rondônia.

According to Alves, the goal is to encourage student participation in OBMEP and, consequently, improve their performance in Mathematics and the state's educational indicators. In 2017, students from Rondônia won one gold, one bronze, and 11 honorable mentions.

In São João da Barra, a municipality 334 km from Rio de Janeiro on the northern coast of the state, the cooperation agreement will initially reach 11 of the approximately 40 schools in the region, but there is already an expansion plan motivated by the interest of the city's teachers. Scheduled to begin in March, the program will reach 12 teachers and approximately 360 students from levels 1 (6th and 7th grades) and 2 (8th and 9th grades).

Representing IMPA at the signing of the agreement, in addition to Claudio Landim, was the head of the Academic Extension Programs Division, Claudia Vasconcelos. Representing the Municipality of São João da Barra were the pedagogical coordinator Daniel Pinheiro Caetano Damasceno, the educational advisor Cláudio Adão Moraes Andrade, and the mathematics coordinator Márcio Vinicius de Souza Porfirio.

The goal of the municipality in Northern Rio de Janeiro State is to offer students the opportunity to access other educational options. There is even the possibility of creating a municipal Mathematics Olympiad.

Damasceno said he believes that by being exposed to a new world through education, young people will have prospects for a better life later on.

In the Brazilian Mathematical Olympiad (OBMEP), the municipality's best result was a bronze medal won in 2013. In the last edition, students from the city received nine honorable mentions.