Report on the Bio-Battle competition 2013

This year CSSP organised a new activity Bio-Knowledge Battle for secondary school students which was launched at the University of the South Pacific (USP). The chief purpose of the BIO-Battle is to provide secondary school students with an opportunity to test their knowledge and practical application of biology with other secondary school students in an exciting and competitive meet. Such competitions create healthy development in teamwork and help students to make successful decisions for further education.

The inaugural competition was carried out with schools along the Suva and Nausori corridor only to see how this new competition was accepted by the students.  This inaugural Bio-Knowledge Battle has been successful, so we decided to to make it an annual event and expand it to national level to include the closely related scientific discipline of Biology.

The questions for the competition will be in accordance with the Ministry of Education’s syllabus (Forms 5–7) and mostly applied from the theory and the laboratory activities of the secondary education curriculum.  Total of 15 schools (45 students) made it to the competition at the central Division. The students, teachers and parents present, gave a positive feedback on the competition and all of the schools wanted to participate next year and would really appreciate if it went to the national level. The response from the students was overwhelming. Some of the feedbacks from students are given below.

“Bio battle is an excellent competition compelling students to study ‘out of the box’. It also develops team laying abilities. A great experience”.

Students competing in the Bio-battle.

The winners of this inaugural competition were Mahatma Gandhi Memorial School, 1st position, the second position was obtained by Yat Sen Secondary, and the third went to Suva Muslim College. Congratulations to these schools and thank you to all the participating schools.

Komal Shandil
Coordinator