Students bring home science gold, but what about next year?

Israel has been on an Olympic roll lately, with teams picking up medals in several of the hardest “sports” around — mathematics, computer science, and physics. Israeli high school students participated in the annual international Olympiads, winning top honors for solving complicated problems in each of the disciplines.

Students who participated in the event came from various parts of the country, and from both the religious and secular school systems. But at least one policy group is concerned that looming budget cuts in the education system could harm the chances of Israeli students’ excelling in future events.

The three contests in which Israelis shone this summer — the International Mathematical Olympiad, the International Physics Olympiad, and International Olympiad in Informatics — are part of the five international contests in the hard sciences developed by UNESCO for high school students. Israelis did not score a medal in this year’s Chemistry Olympiad, and did not send a team to the Biology Olympiad.

In its latest triumph, Israel’s student team won six medals: one gold, three silver and two bronze at the International Mathematical Olympiad. Started in 1959, the math Olympiad is the oldest of the five international science events. Teams are faced with problems in some of the most difficult areas of math (not usually covered in high school) such as projective and complex geometry, functional equations and number theory.

Overall, the Israeli team was ranked 13th among 97 participating countries at this year’s event in Santa Marta, Colombia, this past weekend. That was a distinct improvement over last year’s performance in Argentina, when the Israeli team was ranked 31st, winning three silvers and one bronze, along with an honorary mention. Israel also beat the other two Middle Eastern countries participating, Syria (88th) and Turkey (17th). Iran came in ahead of Israel at number 10.

Israel also did well in the International Physics Olympiad, winning one gold, three silvers and one bronze and ranking 13th in this Olympiad as well, a jump of 12 spots over the 2012 results. The Physics Olympiad is 43 years old and is perhaps the most intense of all the Olympiads, with students having five hours to answer difficult theoretical and practical problems. This year’s event was held in Denmark, and in 2019, on the fiftieth anniversary of the Olympiad, the event will be held in Israel.

In June, Israel scored at the International Olympiad in Informatics, also known as the Computer Olympiad. The four Israeli teens who represented the country won one gold, two silver and one bronze medal, ranking eighth out of 80.

Participants in the event are given problems for which they have to write computer programs using algorithms; the more efficient (less code used) and powerful the program is, the higher the score. The problems, needless to say, are very complicated (one used in last year’s Olympiad, for example, called “Jousting Tournament,” required three pages of very detailed instructions as to what was expected from teams).

Naturally, Israel’s top educators have been ecstatic over the recent Israeli victories. Speaking to students who won medals in the Informatics Olympiad, Education Minister Shai Piron said “This is an impressive and exciting accomplishment, and a great proof of the skills among Israeli youth. I have no doubt that with our talent in science, the State of Israel will continue to lead the world in quality of scientific research, entrepreneurship and innovation.”

Speaking to members of all the Israeli teams in Jerusalem, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said, “We live in the 21st century, a century in which knowledge is exploding — in science, technology, and information. The pace of change is very quick, and we, too, need to be quick. Your accomplishments are crucial to ensure the future of Israel.”

In a television interview, Ofer Grossman, a bronze medal winner in math, said that he felt the opportunity to succeed in an international event was available to any student in his school. Those who qualified for the team were given an intense two week training program at the Weizmann Institute, where they were trained by top members of the mathematics department.

That, said some critics, is the crux of the problem; the students were able to qualify for an event like the math Olympiad because of the help they got outside of school. While some kids are always going to be more motivated than others to compete in the sciences, said a policy group, the state had the obligation to ensure that all students had the opportunity to learn solid math skills without having to rely on expensive tutors or the largesse of outside groups.

In a recent report, the Adva Center, a self-proclaimed social justice watchdog, warned against the recent trend of “outsourcing” education to groups outside the educational system. In the sciences, this includes a number of hi-tech companies, such as Intel and Microsoft, which run educational training programs for students for disadvantaged backgrounds who live in peripheral areas where advanced facilities are unavailable.

While that kind of assistance is welcome, Adva said, it was the job of the government to educate children — and to make sure that there was enough money to do so.

“Instituting the forces of the marketplace in the educational system” by recruiting the private sector to make up for budget shortfalls, the group said in a study, “displaces the concept of education as a right and a way to foster equality to one that becomes a consumable that only those with wealth can produce, for those who can afford to buy it.”

That, the group said, was not the way to ensure that Israel’s next generation would be well-educated in science, or any other discipline — and with this year’s budget cuts, the problem will only get worse.