28th June 2018: The Grand Finale of the SLIIT Soft Skills 2018 programme designed to bridge the gap that exists in the current school curriculum was concluded recently with the Programme attracting 39 schools from districts across the country. The programme included a biz quiz covering not only Sri Lanka but across the world, as well as mind mapping and poster presentations. Maliyadeva Girls School,Kurunegala emerged as champions while Lyceum International Wattala was the first runner up. Rathnawali Balika Vidyalaya, Gampaha became the second runner up. Mr. Ruwan Edirisinghe, the Chairman of RN Constructions Group of Companies graced this occasion as the Chief Guest at the awards ceremony held at the SLIIT Malabe Campus.

SLIIT Business School has been conducting the Soft Skills Interschool quiz and workshop to uplift soft skills of Sri Lankan school children for 6 consecutive years. The competition helps to cultivate essential skills such as team work, problem solving, leadership skills and creative thinking. The workshop is for secondary school students in State, Private and International schools with the aim to spark their interest in Soft Skills and encourage out of the box thinking, whilst improving the business knowledge among school children. Even though these Soft Skills are becoming increasingly hard skills of today’s work force, the school curriculum has ignored this vital aspect and this Soft Skills programme helps to bridge the gap. The preliminary rounds for the competition were held in Kandy, Malabe, Kurunegala, Kandy, Rathnapura, Matara and Jaffna with the participation of 203 teams from 122 schools representing the whole country.

The highly competitive interschool quiz covered current developments in local and international business, international trade and business communications. The SLIIT Soft Skills initiative was introduced in 2012, as a one-day programme. An important new segment enriching the programme in 2018 is a guided tour for the participants at a manufacturing plant to enable them to witness and appreciate the modern high-tech manufacturing processes. Prof. Samantha Thelijjagoda, Dean of the SLIIT Business School commented, “Our objective is to introduce the soft skills programme and to ensure Sri Lankan school children receive the much needed exposure and develop the ability to perform efficiently in the future workplace. We’re proud to say that this year we were able to extend the programme to schools from all over the island and have received a positive response from many participants.” Sponsors of the SLIIT Soft Skills programme are BOC, Platinum Sponsor; Marina, Gold Sponsor; IFS, Silver Sponsor; Unilever, Bronze Sponsor; and Nestle - official food and beverage partner; CMA, MBSL and Atlas Axilia.