The Macedonian pupils continue with successful appearances at the international junior competitions in informatics (for pupils up to 15.5 years of age). At the 4th European Junior Olympiad in Informatics (EJOI 2020), which from September 2-nd to 6-th was held in the form of an online competition, the Macedonian team, consisting of the competitors Sara Stefanovska from Kriva Palanka, Atina Ruvinova from Ohrid, Jan Stojanovski from Skopje, Ivan Jovanoski from Prilep, and as an unofficial competitor – Eva Dimitrievska from Kumanovo, led by the leaders, Mile Jovanov and Emil Stankov from the Faculty of Computer Science and Engineering (FCSE), won a bronze medal.

The pupils from the team were selected through a year-long cycle of competitions, which is regularly organized by the Computer Society of Macedonia (CSM), and this year was held for the 31-st time, but in different conditions due to the current pandemic. The competitions are held through the mendo.mk system which is available online throughout the year for all interested competitors.

The official host of EJOI 2020 was Georgia, and the main organizer was the Ministry of Education, Science, Culture and Sports of Georgia. The primary goal of EJOI as an important and elite educational event is to stimulate the interest in informatics among younger children in all European countries, as well as to enable the best European young talents to demonstrate the knowledge and skills they have already acquired in this area, and more specifically in programming. Each EJOI country participates with a team consisting of 4 competitors, a leader and a deputy team leader, and this year due to the specific circumstances (online competition), it was also possible to register unofficial competitors whose results were not taken into account for the official ranking. Students compete in solving algorithmic problems in two competition days.

Due to the pandemic, this year, for the first time, the European Junior Olympiad in Informatics was held online, with competitors from each national team being supervised by their leaders. Additionally, in order to ensure complete regularity of the competition, the competitors were under constant video surveillance (video camera and software that records all the activities of the competitor on the computer on which he/she works). The Macedonian team competed from the premises of the Faculty of Computer Science and Engineering (FCSE), which provided all the conditions for quality technical connection with Georgia.

A total of 92 students from 27 European countries participated in EJOI 2020. In this extremely strong competition, the winner of the bronze medal for Macedonia was Sara Stefanovska. This success of our team once again confirms that young Macedonian students possess knowledge with which they can stand side by side with the pupils of their age from all over Europe and beyond.

If conditions allow, the next, 5th in a row, European Junior Olympiad in Informatics (EJOI 2021) will be held next year, on the spot – in Tbilisi, Georgia.