The extraordinary success of the Slovak Olympiad team

An image showing the Slovaki olympiad team

Source: © Martin Putala

Martina Hestericova meets the volunteers behind Slovakia’s chemistry Olympiad success story

Cuts to funding for school science courses means that Slovak students can rarely explore science experiments themselves. The luckier ones might witness a demonstration of a titration, while the rest of high school students graduate without ever holding a pipette or a beaker.

Despite this, Slovak school pupils have performed to a consistently high level in international chemistry competitons – and a group of highly motivated volunteer teachers are key to their success.

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