The European Parliament Ambassador to Schools Programme (EPAS)

This year the Senior 2s spent the Geography lessons of Term 1 exploring the European Union through participation in the EPAS programme. This raises awareness about European parliamentary democracy, the role of the European Parliament and European values. The programme gave the students the opportunity to understand their rights as EU citizens and to learn about how they can actively participate in the EU’s democratic processes. Through many interactive games and team work, they learnt how the EU affects their daily lives and even had a role play where they wore the hat of European Parliamentarians, and had to take decisions on current subjects, taking into considerations all the requests of various stakeholders.

At the end of this journey, the girls were tested on the subjects we covered and those who ranked in the top 20 positions, moved on to participate in the EPAS quiz, which took place in school on Friday 18th March. External moderators ran a quiz of five rounds, in order to select a winning school team. The quiz started off quietly, with lots of tension and insecurity felt in the five teams, however by the third round, the adrenaline rush kicked in and as each team successfully answered their questions, there was clapping and cheering to be heard from every corner of the school!! After round three, two teams had to be eliminated, and we had a tantalizing round of sudden death since there was a tie…. The suspense was palpable!!

Three teams moved on to round 4, after which another team had to be eliminated, leaving two excited teams with very jittery participants to contest the final round. Thankfully the point-counting didn’t take too long, and the winning team was announced amidst shouts of joy! Our new EPAS school team made up of Amber Debono, Amy Pizzuto, Sophie Cachia, Ella Gauci Borda and Yasmine Shawish will now compete against the other participating schools in another quiz on the 9th May 2022 – Europe Day.

This was a lovely experience for all, and one which we hope to include in our annual calendar! A huge well done goes to all the participants who did us proud and prepared for this event to the best of their ability in the interest of their team. Prosit girls! You were amazing!

Ms Mireille Pace Ross