BMC to rear ‘mathletes’

Mumbai: Maths Olympiad (MO) — the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation’s (BMC) education department’s dream project — is all set to take off. MO, which is the first such civic initiative, is for select municipal school students, which are proficient in the subject, and would be trained for competing at international level by 2021. The training under the project will be held throughout the year and will be imparted by trained teachers. The BMC will select 30 kids from each of the city’s 24 wards for the Olympiad team

Along with a child’s regular syllabus, the kids under this programme will be preparing for the competition. They will have a special class or tuition for this programme. It will provide special books and guides to them. The aim of the project is not just to let the kids learn Maths but to let a student think ‘logically’ and ‘practically’ about everything. “By solving some numericals a child can just score good marks but to succeed in life, it has to be beyond that. To learn the art of reasoning is what this programme will provide our kids,” said Prakash Charate, deputy education officer of BMC. 

The target number of students to be trained for this project is 360. 15 students will be selected from each ward. However huge wards like M/E and L that is Govandi and Kurla respectively will have 30 students each for the programme. In the year 2021, BMC plans to let these students represent the country at an international level. Till 2021, the selected students will have to go through school level, Taluka level, City level, State level, Nation level and then International level. 

“At present, translation work is going on, so that this special books can be distributed to all medium schools. The syllabus is ready! The moment the translation is complete, distribution will begin,” Charate said, who is also the in charge officer of this programme. When asked about the fees, he said, “It is something we (BMC) are doing for these kids. We want them to grow and succeed like any other kid in our city!” 

Around 11,000 teachers are trained for MO in 1,195 BMC-run schools. In this training process, a teacher is told to select children from his or her class who is sharp, intelligent and good at academics. “A teacher knows how his student is, so we have given the right of selecting the student to the teacher,” said Snehalata Chavan, BMC’s administrative officer of schools. Reportedly, a student should be good at subjects like Mathematics, Science and English to get selected for this programme.