11/08/2021

Rio will host the Carioca Mathematics Olympiad.

Divulgação/ Prefeitura do Rio

The city that has already hosted the Olympic Games will now also have a mathematics olympiad to call its own, thanks to a partnership between IMPA and the city of Rio de Janeiro. The Carioca Mathematics Olympiad (OCM) was officially launched this Wednesday (11), in a ceremony at the Gonçalves Dias Municipal School, São Cristóvão, with the presence of the general director of IMPA, Marcelo Viana, the mayor of the city, Eduardo Paes, and the municipal secretary of Education, Renan Ferreirinha.

IMPA will be responsible for developing all the tests for the competition, which begins this year and aims to engage students from Rio de Janeiro in the discipline, as well as seek out new talent in the city's municipal schools. The OCM will reach approximately 1,000 schools in the city.

All students from Mondays to 9th grade in Rio's municipal school system are eligible to participate in the competition. They will be divided into four levels, although each grade will have its own awards. The OCM will distribute gold medals to 5% of the students, silver medals to 10%, and bronze medals to 15% of the participants, in addition to honorable mentions for another 20%.

A trip to Disney and NASA.

In addition to medals, five girls and five boys in each grade will receive a special award. The 40 winners from the Fridays grade onwards will be entitled to a study trip to NASA headquarters, the United States space agency, and to Disney World parks in Orlando, Florida, in July of next year. The ten best students in each grade from the Mondays grade onwards will also win a laptop computer and a programming course.

“IMPA is extremely pleased and proud to be associated with this initiative of the Rio de Janeiro city government in support of education. The success of OBMEP proves that mathematics olympiads are a powerful tool for discovering talent and encouraging learning, highlighting the playful nature of this learning. The OCM experience will also be very useful for IMPA in its effort to extend OBMEP to the early years of schooling,” said Viana.

Divulgação/ Prefeitura do Rio

IMPA was a key player in the development of the competition. The city government used the Brazilian Mathematics Olympiad for Public Schools (OBMEP) and the Brazilian Mathematics Olympiad (OBM) as references.

“[OBMEP] is a successful public education policy that shows results, supports, helps, connects and, above all, shows young people that it is possible to dream through the path of knowledge,” said the Secretary of Education, Renan Ferreirinha, a multi-medalist who participated in six editions of OBMEP, at the ceremony. “OBMEP is what opened my horizons beyond what was previously exposed,” he said.

Like OBMEP, OCM will take place in two phases. The difference is that, in the Rio de Janeiro Olympiad, the first phase will not be a test, but an assessment of students' classroom performance throughout the Tuesdays term. Those who qualify in this criterion move on to the second phase, which is optional, and is when students will take the test prepared by IMPA. In the first edition, which begins this year, the tests will be applied on November Wednesdays. The results, according to the OCM calendar also released this Wednesday (11), will be released by December 1Thursdays.

OCM will also offer rewards to teachers, principals, and schools, who will receive a 3D woodworking lab. Teachers and principals with the highest proportion of award-winning students will be rewarded with an international training trip.