Slovakia

Ministry of Education, Science, Research and Sports of the Slovak Republic

www.minedu.sk

The appointing organization of Slovak Biology Olympiad is the Ministry of Education, Science, Research and Sports of the Slovak Republic, with the Slovak Committee of Biology Olympiad responsible for the scientific content. Iuventa, the Slovak Institute of Youth, is appointed by the Ministry to organize the NBO.

Slovak Biology Olympiad includes the competition for both elementary and high school students, encompassing categories with IBO-type tasks, but also project-based categories and specific categories for systematic biology. The high school, IBO-type task competition is organized in 3 rounds: school (February), regional (March) and national (April) round. The national round is hosted by one of the Slovak high schools or universities.

In the high school, IBO-task type competition, 300-350 students participate in the second round, and around 3200 students participate in the second round of the elementary school competition. The data for the first round participation are not collected.

For the high-school, IBO-type tasks competition, in the first, school round, the format of the tests is up to the organizing committee at every individual school. In the following two rounds (the regional and national round), the theoretical tests are multiple choice questions, questions with a numerical or very short answer, less often questions with a long, free text answer. Both rounds also include two practical tasks for every student that contain a hands-on part (this may be a dissection, physiological or biochemical experiments, but also a more complex computational or theoretical task, such as bioinformatics or genetics) and a number of questions related to the topic of the practical task that have a structure similar to that of theoretical part.

In both regional and national round, the theoretical and practical tasks are created by an author collective appointed by the Slovak Committee of Biology Olympiad that include researchers, university teachers and university students.

Both the regional and the national round tasks are performed by students at a selected high school, local extracurricular activities center, or a university, under the supervision of regional committees or the Slovak National Committee.

To prepare individual students for NBO, no specific training is organized - the students participating in the regional and national round are expected to prepare individually, with the support of their biology teachers.

To participate in the IBO, two rounds of selection are organized for the best 10-12 students from the national round. In the first selection round, the students go through one week of theoretical training. The second week of organized preparation is dedicated to the practical training. Based on these two weeks of preparation, the best six students, four participants and two back-up participants, are selected. These two weeks of preparation for the IBO take place at Slovak universities (typically Comenius University in Bratislava, but also Slovak University of Agriculture in Nitra).

For the high-school, IBO-type tasks competition, the individual preparation is based on the high-school textbooks, tasks from the previous NBO rounds available at the website of Iuventa, and the textbook "Biology" by Campbell & Reece that is recommended as a study literature.

The three best-ranking students of each category of the national round receive medals, accompanied by books and other prizes. Certificates are awarded to students that pass a certain point threshold. Often, a dean or a rector of the faculty/university that hosts the national round offers additional prizes, either a special prize for one of the students (usually the one that excels in either the practical of the theoretical part) or free admission to the university for the successful participants.

Slovak Biology Olympiad consists of several categories dedicated to either students of elementary school (7 – 15 years) or high school (15 – 20 years). Only the high-school categories can yield to the participation in IBO.

1st September – 30th June.

1 – 4

30 – 35