Iranian students did impressively in math and informatics (computer science), but did not shine like they once did in physics and chemistry.
The international Olympiads are held each summer for teams of high school students or those who have just graduated from high school. The Iran Times has been tracking the records of the Iranian teams since 1995, as shown in the accompanying table above.
The Olympiads were first started a half century ago by the Soviet Union and remained a Soviet Bloc event until the Cold War began to thaw in the 1980s.
They are now broadly accepted as a major youth competition that encourages work in math and the sciences.
When Iran started competing, it did outstandingly. For example in 1995, 1996 and 1997, Iranian students scored in the top nine of all the countries competing in all four Olympiads that Iran participated in those three years. In the last three years, however, Iran has scored in the top nine of only three of the 15
Olympiads it joined.
In 1995 and 1997, Iran’s average rank was 4.5. In every year through 2005, its average rank was better than 10. But in every year since then, its average rank has been worse than 10.
This year, it’s average was 14.2—worse then in any other year apart from 2010, when it ranked 15.6
It isn’t clear why Iran is slipping. More countries are participating every year, but the ones that score higher than Iran tend to be the same old ones like China, Japan and Russia, not countries that have just joined the Olympiads recently.
Iran did best this year in math and informatics, ranking eighth in the world in both. But it ranked 20th in chemistry, the second worst it has ever done. And it came in 22nd in physics, its third worst performance. From 1995 through 2007, Iran always scored in the top seven in physics, so 22nd is quite a comedown.
In informatics, Iran was outranked by China, which came in first, Russia, the United States, Japan, Belarus, Poland, and Romania. Four of those seven were part of the Soviet Bloc, showing it still can play in the Olympiads. In physics, where Iran scored the worst this year, it was beaten by 21 countries, nine of which were in the old Soviet Bloc.
In past years, when Iran did well as a team, it did so because all of the students it sent were strong. Its top finisher might be far below the top finisher from several other countries, but its last finisher was far above the last placed student from most other countries. That is where Iran seems to have lost its edge in recent years.
But there was still a spark of the old days. In informatics, for example, the top scorer overall was American Johnny Ho, who scored a perfect 600. No one came near him. Iran’s top scorer came in with only 395 points. But Iran’s last student scored 240 points. Only five other fourth-place students did better. The fourth-placed American only got 218 points.