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2020/2021 Contests

15 September 2020

Dear colleagues,

I hope that you are doing as well as possible under the current global circumstances. At the CEMC, we recognize that school situations across Canada and around the world are even more varied than normal at this time.

We plan to offer our full set of contests in 2020/2021. We recognize that the ways in which contests are written might vary greatly from school to school. We want to enable as much participation as possible, because this is, for us, the most important goal of our contests. We know that many schools are operating fully in-person, many schools are operating fully remotely, and many schools are operating in a hybrid model with a mix of students in different circumstances.

With the possible exception of the 2021 Euclid Contest, we will permit all of the following scenarios this year:

  1. A cohort of students writing in school on the posted contest day under the supervision of appropriate members of the school community.
  2. One or more cohorts of students writing in school on the earliest possible day(s) after the posted contest day under the supervision of appropriate members of the school community.
  3. A cohort of students writing at home on the posted contest day under the supervision of an adults in their home.

Some schools may choose to have students in all of these situations participate in a single contest. We also understand that your school may register with one particular scenario in mind, but that there may be the need to make an unexpected switch — we aim to provide as much flexibility as possible to you.

Because of the admissions and scholarship implications of the 2021 Euclid Contest, a decision about this contest will be made at a later date.

This year, we will also be more flexible in our acceptance of registration of home schooled students, recognizing that some of them may indeed be “remote learners” rather than traditional home schooled students. We will ask this question and strongly encourage remote learners to register through their normal day school (there are several advantages to this for you and for them), but we will allow these registrations.

Some may be concerned about issues of “competitive integrity” that may arise as a result of these approaches. We acknowledge that there may be such issues, but have made the decision that, in the current environment, participation is most important. If competition is of a higher priority for your school and your students, I would encourage you to choose to offer the contest in the way that you feel is best and to manage the competitive aspects within your school’s participants.

There are logistical details that need to be worked out, and we will be working diligently on these over the coming weeks. Because we know that some of these details will be important to your decisions around registration, we will send out further details for our first contests of the year by early October.

On behalf of everyone in the CEMC, I wish you good health for the weeks and months ahead. We know that, when we begin to emerge from the global pandemic, education will continue to be one of the most vital drivers in our 21st century society. We are here with you to give all of our students as many opportunities for growth and success as possible.

Best wishes,
 
Ian VanderBurgh
Director
The CENTRE for EDUCATION in MATHEMATICS and COMPUTING