VietNamNet Bridge – Vietnam has many international Olympiad winners, but many of them choose to live or work elsewhere.
Vietnamese students attend the 2014 Physics Olympiad.
The Ministry of Education and Training (MOET) on July 20 announced that Vietnamese students won three gold and two silver medals at the 2014 Physics International Olympiad in Kazakhstan.
Previously, it announced that four students won silver and bronze medals at the 2014 International Olympiad in Informatics in Taiwan.
Vietnamese students have also won one silver and three bronze medals at the International Biology Olympiad. And with three gold, two silver and one bronze medals, Vietnam ranked 10th among 101 countries which had students attending the 2014 International Math Olympiad.
Vietnamese receive the news so regularly about the high achievements gained at international competitions that they may assume that it is an easy task for Vietnamese students.
In fact, according to Nguyen Thanh Hung, deputy headmaster of the High School for the Gifted under the HCM City National University, it is very difficult to obtain medals at prestigious international competitions like the Olympiads.
In general, 50 percent of students attending the Olympiads can expect to get medals, of which one-sixth are gold medals, one-third are silver and half are bronze medals.
For example, at the informatics competition, where there are 300 attendants, 25 gold, 50 silver and 75 bronze medals would be awarded. “As such, it is not easy to obtain medals at all,” Hung commented.
Vu Dinh Tuy, a physics expert, who was the leader of Vietnamese delegations attending the recent physics Olympiads, also said that only students who have talent can win medals at the competitions.
“Training can help students improve their knowledge, but it will not help those who do not really have talent,” he said.
Noting that international Olympiads is a big playing field that all countries want to join, Tuy said many competitors can be discovered and become famous scientists.
Nguyen Khac Minh, a renowned educator, said he puts a high hope on Le Hung Viet Bao, who won gold medals at two consecutive math Olympiads and has been an excellent math student at Cambridge University.
“I hope Bao can do something great in the future like Professor Ngo Bao Chau,” Minh said.
Ngo Bao Chau, who also won two gold medals at two math Olympiads, has become famous all over the world as a winner of the Field medal, the most honourable award for mathematicians.
However, Minh said most of the Vietnamese talents who won high prizes at international competitions now live and work overseas.
The problem, according to Hung, lies in the fact that Vietnam does not have any policies to encourage them to follow higher education overseas and return to Vietnam to serve the homeland.
Most of the talented students study abroad with scholarships granted by foreign universities. And after the study period ends, they tend to stay and work overseas, leaving Vietnam with a brain drain.
NLD