21.12.2011

As reported earlier, the Executive Committee of ICMI had received by November 2010 three bids for hosting ICME-13 in 2016, namely (in alphabetical order) from

--  Czech Republic (Prague)
--  Germany  (Hamburg)
--  South Africa  (Durban)

Site visits were organised in May and September 2011, the visiting team being composed of ICMI President Bill Barton, Vice-President Mina Teicher and myself.  The visits allowed the Executive Committee to appreciate the quality of the local infrastructure, congress center or university, the accommodation namely cheap accommodation at university residences or the like, the support the project was receiving locally and nationally as well as the ideas, composition and expertise of the organising team. A photo reporting of the three site visits is available here:

Durban: https://picasaweb.google.com/jaimecarvalho/ICME13SiteVisit1Durban?authuser=0&feat=directlink
Prague: https://picasaweb.google.com/jaimecarvalho/ICME13SiteVisit2Prague?authuser=0&feat=directlink
Hamburg: https://picasaweb.google.com/jaimecarvalho/ICME13SiteVisit3Hamburg?authuser=0&feat=directlink

The bids were thoroughly discussed by the ICMI EC at its meeting in Beijing in February 2011; after the site visits additional requests were made to the three bidding countries that had the opportunity to revise the bids accordingly.  The final decision was made through an email discussion that took place between October and December 2011.  The very high quality of the three proposed bids is a very good sign for the vitality of ICMI, but only one site could be chosen. In consequence the task of the Executive Committee was especially difficult.

The ICMI Executive Committee is pleased to announce its decision of accepting the invitation from Germany.  We hope that the international mathematical education community will enthusiastically receive the invitation of our German colleagues for 2016, so to make ICME-13 a huge international event that will advance studies, interest and support for mathematics education all over the world.  The precise dates of ICME-13 will be announced later and a German delegation will be present at ICME-12 to provide information on the 2016 ICME.

The ICMI Executive Committee wishes to express its deepest gratitude to the mathematics education and mathematics communities in the three bidding countries, and especially to the three persons who chaired the committees that prepared the bids, namely Professors Jarmila Novotna (Czech Republic), Gabriele Kaiser (Germany) and Mamokgethi Setati (South Africa).  The care they took coordinating the team that prepared the bids and organised the site visits deserves our recognizance. It is our hope that the enthusiasm of those who supported these bids will reflect not only in ICME-13 (and ICME-12!), but in future ICMEs as well.

The ICMI Executive Committee wishes to stress that since one of the current EC members is from one of bidding countries --- namely Member-at-Large Renuka Vithal (South Africa) ---, she has taken no part in the discussion or decision-making about ICME-16, nor have had access to the competing bids.