Co-curricular activities play a vital role in our students gaining a rounded education. We believe that every student has the ability to shine in at least one area of school life with the right support. It is central to our ethos, therefore, to provide opportunities for all students to take part in plays, concerts and other events: the school has eight annual productions to ensure that everyone really does get a chance. We also know that the confidence gained in one discipline will soon rub off on others and enable students to approach everything they do with greater enthusiasm and conviction.
Elizabeth Moir School has a distinguished record of producing outstanding shows. There is always a tremendous buzz around the school in the days leading up to a major performance: being able to perform to packed crowds in Colombo's top theatres is an experience none of our students forget. Senior productions are directed by Anushka Senanayake, who was nominated for Best Screenplay at the 17th Asian Film Awards in Hong Kong for the award-winning film Paradise.
The most-anticipated Senior School events of the year are annual Inter-House Drama and Inter-House Music competitions. The performances are organised entirely by the students, who arrange songs, choreograph dance routines, conduct choirs and orchestras, control lights and sound, and direct plays themselves — proving that there is really no limit to what young people can achieve when given the opportunity and support.
The stage experience gained by our students in assemblies and drama lessons from a young age means that they are already confident actors and actresses by the time they act in their first play. The students always work exceptionally hard to produce slick and entertaining performances, and the Junior School has staged some truly memorable productions over the years, such as Alice in Wonderland, Perstephanie Goes Underground and Seasons of the Willows.
At the Senior School, students have the opportunity to stretch themselves as actors through challenging roles in serious drama. The school has put on numerous ground-breaking productions that have both entertained audiences and made them think about important issues, from Twelve Angry Jurors to Ibsen's An Enemy of the People, as well as murder mysteries such as Witness for the Prosecution and farces like Neil Simon's Rumors. Drama is also offered as an IGCSE subject: one of our students won the High Achievement award for the highest mark in Sri Lanka in the first year we offered the subject. After this, it is little surprise that several of our students have gone on to act in films and television programmes, from Funny Boy to The Good Karma Hospital.
Film Club teaches students the basics of scriptwriting, lighting, sound, filming and editing, following in the footsteps of award-winning Sri Lankan film director and Moir alumni, Rehan Mudannayake.
In 2024, Urban Sponge, a documentary our students created on Colombo’s wetlands, won The Green Award at the prestigious Agenda 14 Short Film Festival, Sri Lanka’s longest running short film festival.
The school has three main Choirs (Infant, Junior and Senior) and a Chamber Choir, and all participate in public performances throughout the year. Both a combined Junior / Senior Choir and the Chamber Choir won Silver Diplomas in the 4th Asia-Pacific Choir Games when it was held in Colombo. There are thriving Dance Clubs in both schools where students learn styles from Latin to cutting-edge Contemporary and Hip-Hop.
The Senior School Orchestra, conducted by former Commonwealth Music Ambassador, Natasha Senanayake, performs a mixture of classical pieces, film soundtracks and orchestral renditions of modern pop songs. A recent highlight has been the orchestra playing pieces arranged by our own students. Many of its members also play for the Junior Symphony Orchestra.
The annual Senior School musical is the biggest production of the year, with about 80 students from all classes in the cast and crew. The slick, professional production combined with the incredible talent of the students made shows like Chicago, West Side Story and Singin’ in the Rain huge hits with Colombo audiences. A review of West Side Story in national newspaper, The Daily News, said the cast ‘were 100 percent committed to their performance and gave their audience an exceptionally entertaining evening!’ An earlier production was called ‘the best school concert I have ever seen’ by the reviewer from The Nation newspaper.
The school has laid the foundation for several students to have careers in music from Kharesma Ravichandran, whose songs have over 670 million views on YouTube, including more than half a billion for her hit song Achacho, to Chrissy Renker of folk duo Wednesday’s Wolves and Sri Lankan singer-songwriter Q.
Students have Art lessons as part of the curriculum throughout the Junior School and in Forms 1-3 at the Senior School. Art is also a very popular club activity in both schools, with students learning a variety of artistic skills and using a wide range of materials. Students may then choose to take Art at IGCSE and A Level. Moir students won the World Prize for IGCSE Art (for the highest mark in Sri Lanka and often the highest in the world), six times in a row, as well as the A Level award last year.
Students’ incredible IGCSE and A Level portfolios are one of the highlights of the annual Senior School Art Exhibition, which is always opened by a famous figure from the world of Art and Design. The Inter-House Art competition allows students to express their ideas and identities freely and let their imaginations run wild. At the Junior School Art Exhibition, every child has their work displayed and the results are never short of spectacular. The variety, colour, originality and vision on show always astound our guests.
With creative skills ever more important in the modern workplace, many students have gone onto careers in artistic fields, as fashion designers, architects and curators of galleries.
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Students learn to speak confidently and persuasively on any topic in the Senior School Debating Club. Impromptu Inter-House Debating competitions force students to think on their feet, without relying on the internet for research. Inter-school debating in Sri Lanka is highly competitive with regular tournaments taking up entire weekends. Last year, our team won the Schools League, gaining recognition as the best team in the country, after winning all the most prestigious all-island competitions, including the Sri Lanka Schools’ Debating Championships, organised by the Law Faculty of the University of Colombo, and the tournaments organised by Ladies’ College and Royal College. Several students have been selected for the national Debating pool. Savith Wijesundara was selected to represent Sri Lanka in the World Schools Debating Championship in both Serbia in 2024 and Panama in 2025, where he was ranked 15th out of 279 speakers, helping him earn a place to read PPE at Oxford.
We send delegations to both the Colombo Model United Nations and Sri Lanka Model United Nations each year, events which are attended by hundreds of students both from Sri Lanka and neighbouring countries. Plaudits have included being selected as ‘Most Valuable School’ at COMUN and winning nine individual awards at a recent SLMUN, in which six of our students were also part of the Executive Committee that organised the conference and chaired the different committees.
Elizabeth Moir School has been selected by FIRST Global to organise the team to represent Sri Lanka in its annual Robotics Olympiad every year since the inaugural competition in Washington DC in 2017. It is the largest Robotics competition in the world for school students, with 191 national teams competing in 2024. Previous Olympiads were visited by leaders including Ivanka Trump, Mexican President Manuel López Obrador and President of the World Bank Dr. Jim Yong Kim, while will.i.am regularly plays at the closing ceremony with his band The Black Eyed Peas.
Our students have represented their country with distinction, winning major awards for the innovative design of their robots and their advanced engineering skills. Team Sri Lanka won a Judge’s Award in Mexico City, both a Bronze Medal and Judge’s Award in Dubai; and a Gold Medal, the Zhang Heng Award for Engineering Design, in Geneva. In Athens, last year, they finished 6th out of 191 countries and again won Gold Medals for Engineering Design.
Students develop the skills they need for the FIRST Global Challenge through the school’s Robotics and Coding Clubs and through their success in national Robotics competitions. They gain further experience by participating in the FIRST Technical Challenge, competing in the Indian Championship. Last year, they finished 2nd out of 50 teams in India and won the Control Award for the best autonomous robot.
The Senior School also has a thriving Press Club where students produce the school newspaper, The Moir Post, a podcast, Moir Talks, and the annual yearbook. There is also a popular Chess Club: our team won the Inter-International Schools’ tournament last year.
The Junior School has a wide range of other clubs for students to enjoy. In recent years, these have included Cookery, Lego, Media & Digital Art, Games & Fitness, International, Book Club and Needlework.