The Bank of Ceylon (BOC) has been helping to promote science education in Sri Lanka for a considerable period.
In 2016 and 2017, the BOC made generous donations to the Institute of Physics Sri Lanka to host the Sri Lankan teams at the International Junior Science Olympiads held over the past two years.
This year too, the BOC extended its generous support for students to take part in the International Junior Science Olympiad (IJSO) - 2018 that will be held in Gaborone, Botswana.
The Bank has teamed up with IJSO to conduct Junior National Olympiad examinations at province level. BOC has also enabled its online banking platform to students to pay their registration fee directly through a special panel that is available especially for IJSO, a feature enabled through the Bank’s digitization process.
The IJSO is a major international educational competition held annually for schoolchildren, to recognize the significance of the Natural Sciences in the general education of young people and in all aspects of their lives. It is an individual and team competition where knowledge related to physics, chemistry and biology are covered and tested simultaneously.
Each year, Sri Lanka is represented at the IJSO by six students and three university academics. The students for this competition are selected through the Sri Lankan Junior Science Olympiad (SLJSO), an examination held locally at each competition year.
Since 2010, the Institute of Physics Sri Lanka has been playing a major role in organizing this competition and holding the SLJSO examinations islandwide. The SLJSO and IJSO examinations are open for students in Sri Lanka who are sixteen years or younger on December 31 of the competition year.
The SLJSO examination paper consists of questions based on physics, chemistry, biology, and mathematics taught up to the ordinary level.
This year, arrangements have been made to hold the SLJSO preliminary examination in major universities in Sri Lanka.