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Juliana Ichuta and Lucía Mansilla, from Buenos Aires, Mateo Giordano, from Tucumán, and Catalina Laszeski, from Chubut, were selected among more than 130 high school students to represent the country at the International Biology Olympiad 2024, to be held in Astana, capital of Kazakhstan, from July 7 to 14 this year. But although the proposal was approved in 2023 and the funds were disbursed in October last year, this budget is not enough to cover the expenses of the trip. The registration fee, which includes lodging and food between July 7 and 14, and three tickets, is paid by the Argentine Biology Olympiad, but they need help to cover the cost of three other tickets, travel insurance and two nights in a hotel. All this is told by themselves in.

Something similar happens to the computer science, physics, history, geography and philosophy teams. Why is this happening after decades of participation? The new management of the education area, which is within the orbit of the Ministry of Human Capital, headed by Sandra Pettovello, simply cancelled the program.

Education cancelled the previous program and asked us to submit a new proposal, which we did on April 19, but we still have not received a response," explains Luis Baraldo, coordinator of local participation in the International Chemistry Olympics. All the Olympiads financed by Education are in the same situation, waiting for an answer. In the meantime, the preparation for the international competition has been left in the middle". Most of these competitions are in July, although there are some that take place later.

Participation in the 2023 International Chemistry Olympiads

The International Informatics Olympiad will be held in September, in Alexandria, Egypt. This time, the Argentine team has, for the second consecutive year, a female participant, Bianca Vicente, a fifth year student of the Carlos Pellegrini School of Buenos Aires. She qualified after winning the gold medal in the national competition and also won the bronze medal in the Ibero-American Olympiad. In Argentina, according to a research carried out by Chicas en Tecnología, only 34% of science, engineering, technology and mathematics students are women, and only 17% of them study programming. In the programming competition held in Hungary last year, only 5% of the participants...

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