Proposal to establish the Vietnam Mathematical Olympiad Committee

Associate Professor Dr. Nguyen Vu Luong, Chairman of the Science Training Council, High School for Gifted Students in Natural Sciences, Vietnam National University, Hanoi, made this proposal at a workshop to evaluate the training of students for the International Mathematical Olympiad (IMO) on August 10.

According to Mr. Luong, the Mathematical Olympiad Committee will gather people who are good at math and have experience in competing in IMO competitions in previous years. This committee will organize an exam to select the international team, decide on the content of the exam, grade the exam and select the candidates.

"The establishment of such a committee has been done by many countries. At that time, the selection process will be more thorough, many large and small competitions will be held, promoting the movement of learning math better," said Mr. Luong. "Those who are good at math will also contribute more through this committee."

Associate Professor Dr. Tran Nam Dung, Vice Principal of the Gifted High School, Ho Chi Minh City National University, acknowledged Associate Professor Luong's proposal as "very important and necessary".

Analyzing further, Mr. Dung said that basically, to be included in the Vietnamese team participating in IMO, candidates must go through provincial and national excellent student competitions, then the official team selection round (TST). Meanwhile, the exam questions between these rounds are very different and different from IMO (except for the TST round) in terms of structure, test time, content and knowledge scope.

"If there is an Olympic Committee, this unit will guide localities to organize the selection and training of students with an exam most similar to IMO, in order to create consistency and compatibility in review content between levels," said Mr. Dung.

Currently, the national excellent student exam and the international team selection round are managed by the Ministry of Education and Training.

The International Mathematical Olympiad for high school students was first held in 1959, and Vietnam joined in 1974.

In 50 years, the whole country had 288 contestants participating in the competition, winning 271 medals, including 69 gold medals.