Tuymaada International Olympiad

Written by Michael E. Nikolaev

«Tuymaada» is the International Olympiad for schoolchildren and falls under the Ministry of Education, Republic of Sakha (Yakutia). Its main objective is to develop creative abilities in children, monitoring, seeking and revealing talented children. The purpose lies in defining a level of conformity in the world standards of education.

The Olympiad is applied to various subjects such as mathematics, physics, computer science, chemistry (2 age groups: 14 through 15 and 16 through 18). The working languages are Russian, English, French and German.

The first international Olympiad for the schoolchildren of «Tuymaada» was held in 1994 with only 45 participants. Ten years have gone by and now there are 894 participants from 36 geographical points. Leading teachers in Russia are involved in preparing the participants. There are also so-called «Master Class» competitions with highly-professional experts from Novosibirsk, Moscow, Yaroslavl, Chelyabinsk, Yakutsk and other cities and they play all-year-round.

The jury is made up of leading scientists, teachers from the Yakutsk State University and other educational establishments in Russia. Results obtained until now confirm the findings that knowledge and practical skills shown by schoolchildren from Yakutia participating in the Olympiad reach the world standards of education level. Conclusions arrived at by independent experts, clearly indicate that task levels of the «Tuymaada» Olympiad correspond to the level of the All-Russia and International Olympiads.

The scientific, educational and practical significance of the international «Tuymaada» Olympiad is valuable. Creative work with gifted youth has offered wide experience. Systematic tasks have been conducted together with the teachers on a large scale. «Olympic Gatherings» for teams participating is an original school-laboratory where pupils and professors together discussed subjects related to the sciences, they analyzed challenges, sought and found the solution to a problem or the way out of a situation and gave answers to irritable questions. One could just as easily say that they studied the unusual in the ordinary and the complicated in the easy.

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