On Wednesday, all registered schools will receive a sealed envelope containing the questions and encoded answer sheets. School principals will open them only the following day at 9:00 AM. Breaking the seal will symbolically mark the start of the first-ever National Logistics Olympiad.
For the next hour, students will answer forty questions developed by the Scientific Committee, composed of academic lecturers. While solving the single-choice test, they will need to demonstrate, among other things, knowledge of logistics terminology, skills in managing orders, purchasing, deliveries, and warehouses, as well as an understanding of techniques and technologies in logistics processes.
The best will advance to the regional stage, which will take place on January 5, 2009. They will also solve a test, but this time it will be a multiple-choice one.
The final of the 1st National Logistics Olympiad will be held on March 20, 2009, in Poznań, at the headquarters of the Poznan School of Logistics. Students will answer questions covering the entire material that a student of a specialized secondary school should master during several years of study. Instead of a test, the Olympiad participants will solve open-ended problems.
It is worth the effort, as the winners can expect not only valuable material prizes (including laptops) but also an exemption from the written part of the vocational examination in the professions of “logistics technician” and “forwarding technician,” as well as free first and second-cycle studies at the Poznan School of Logistics. The best school whose students compete in the first edition of the Olympiad will also be awarded.
The project aims not only to spark interest in logistics among young people but also to help evaluate the curriculum in secondary and post-secondary schools. As Assoc. Prof. Ireneusz Fechner, Chancellor of the WSL, states:
– The Olympiad will be an important field for verifying the quality of education. Schools will be able to compare the results of their work through the direct competition of students for Olympic laurels and the associated prizes, the most important of which for winners and finalists will be the right to be exempted from the written part of the vocational exam, which, along with the matura exam, concludes education in these schools. Furthermore, the Olympiad will strengthen students’ interest in studying logistics and will also serve as an additional reward for them for choosing this profession.
The substantive partners of the Olympiad are: the Institute of Logistics and Warehousing and the Polish Logistics Society.
Media patronage was provided by: the magazine “Logistyka” (main patron), “Polska Gazeta Transportowa,” the daily newspaper “Polska Głos Wielkopolski,” the portal logistyka.net.pl, and Studentnews.pl.