ACHIEVEMENTS OF YOUNGER PRIMARY SCHOOL STUDENTS IN MATHEMATICS COMPETITIONS DURING IHE COVID-19 PANDEMIC

Abstract

Mathematics competitions represent a very important segment of educational support to gifted students and play a significant role in identifying, motivating and working with those mathematically gifted. The COVID-19 pandemic had a strong impact on all seg- ments of the educational process, including the implementation of mathematics classes, regular and additional, as well as the organization and implementation of mathematics competitions. In this paper we wanted to examine whether the changed conditions in which regular and ad- ditional mathematics classes were implemented had an impact on the achievement of the best- performing math students. The aim of the research is to examine the adoption of advanced level mathematical content that students should have acquired at school in the conditions of the COVID-19 pandemic. The research sample consisted of 4,064 third-grade students (school year 2020/2021) and 3,824 fourth-grade students (school year 2021/2022). The research results indicate that students who should be able to solve advanced level tasks show insufficient practice in performing the four basic calculation operations, as well as insufficient adoption of different methods of solving advanced level tasks. By looking at the achievements of the same generation of students through two consecutive competition cycles, it can be seen that insufficiently adopted concepts in the third grade during the first year of the pandemic remained unexplained in the transition to a higher grade where they represent a problem for further advancement of students.