Uncertain Departure of Young BiH Physicists to the Olympiad, Funds Not Secured

SARAJEVO, (Patria) - On Saturday, May 5, 2018, the State Competition in Physics for high school students was held at the premises of the International University of Burch, with 20 competitors from all over Bosnia and Herzegovina participating.

The best results were achieved by Admir Papić (International High School Sarajevo), Davor Bokan (Third Gymnasium Sarajevo), Muhamed Sokolović (International High School Sarajevo), Nola Šegalo (International High School Sarajevo), and Irfan Durmić (KŠC "Sveti Josip" Sarajevo).

- These students should represent our country at the 49th International Physics Olympiad, which will be held in Portugal from July 21 to 29 this year. However, as in previous years, the departure to this year's Olympiad will be uncertain because financial resources have not been secured - says Benjamin Fetić, president of the Society of Physicists in the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

He stated that every year they have a problem with collecting money for the trip to the international Olympiad because only after the competitions are finished, when the representatives for the International Olympiad are known, which is usually at the beginning of May, can they send requests for help to the relevant ministries, which, by unwritten rule, co-finance only a smaller part of the travel costs.

- Last year, for the first time in more than 20 years, it happened that students from the Sarajevo Canton and the Una-Sana Canton and their parents paid the majority of the travel costs, while the Office of the former Prime Minister of the Tuzla Canton (editor's note: Bego Gutić) fully financed the departure of students from the Tuzla Canton. We really hope that such a situation will not repeat this year because all five Olympians this year are from the Sarajevo Canton. It would be good if such competitions were financed from the budget, as is the case, for example, in the Republic of Croatia, because the development of intellectual potential in our students should not represent a cost, but an investment in the future, Fetić notes.

- We must point out that four years ago we lost the support of the Federal Ministry of Education and Science (FMON) for organizing physics competitions at the level of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina and at the state level, which led to only a few enthusiasts remaining who are trying with all their might to continue holding physics competitions that started in our country more than 40 years ago.

It would truly be a shame if, after so many years, one positive example in our education system simply disappeared. In addition, FMON abolished the awarding of students for achieved results in physics competitions, which again affects the motivation of the students themselves. While in neighboring Croatia there is a fierce debate about what the importance of the so-called STEM fields (acronym for Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) in education should be, we still have not even recognized the importance of STEM fields for the development of society nor have we started a discussion about it.

Our students from 1996 to 2018 have won five silver and seven bronze medals, and twenty-seven commendations at international Olympiads. Of that, in the period from 2013 to 2017, a total of four silver medals, four bronze medals, and eight commendations were won.

- We have never achieved better results, and never has less money been invested by the relevant institutions in our students. These results were achieved primarily thanks to the dedication of the students themselves and the members of the Society who continuously worked with the students through the creation of theoretical and experimental tasks. Every year, at the Department of Physics of the Faculty of Natural Sciences and Mathematics in Sarajevo, we organize multi-week preparations with a focus on experiments because most of our students rarely encounter them during their schooling, i.e., during regular classes in their schools.

In the past five years, we have tried to compensate for this deficiency because the successful execution of the experiment at the Olympiad for our students has proven to be the deciding factor in winning a medal or commendation, as our students in previous years generally solved theoretical tasks better than experimental ones. And we have succeeded to a significant extent, as the results from the last three Olympiads have shown.

Many of our best young physicists who have gone through competitions organized by the Society of Physicists today work as successful professors, researchers, etc., across Europe and America. Thanks to the dedication of the members of the Society of Physicists, Bosnia and Herzegovina today has a widespread but still unconnected scientific diaspora that no one talks about or cares for. And we must slowly change that because investment in education and science has no alternative - concluded Fetić.