Hallside Primary pupils retain Euro quiz title

Apr 8 2009 by Will Henshaw, Rutherglen Reformer

HALLSIDE Primary showed their continental class to retain their South Lanarkshire Euro Quiz title.

The Cambuslang school successfully applied their European knowledge by winning the recent South Lanarkshire Council heat, beating nine other schools to the title.

The school will now represent South Lanarkshire at the Euro Quiz final on Monday, May 11 at the Scottish Parliament in Edinburgh.

Teams from all over Scotland will be taking part.

The winning team consisted of Andrew Friel, Jack Angely, Cameron McLaughlin and Brooklyn Simpson.

Head of Hallside, Gillian Russell, was delighted with the effort of the students.

She said: “We do a topic on Europe and we do one on the Scottish Parliament so our kids are well informed.

“Between term two and term three we have quite a lot of input regarding different aspects of Europe.

“We actually have a competition between the classes to whittle down two from each class to go and represent the team.

“Eventually we have the four people who have preformed the best and who have the best general knowledge about Europe.”

These four are then sent to represent the school at the competition.

Gillian added: “In the end it was Bankhead and us and we went head to head.

“The questions cover quite a range of subjects. For example, they might be asked: ‘Who is the president of France?’ in one question and in another they might be asked who wrote a specific novel.

“They are very self-motivated children and they enjoy the challenge of having to learn on their own.”

Now the team will go to the Scottish Parliament in Edinburgh to test their knowledge against the country’s top schools.

Gillian concluded: “The competition in Edinburgh is harder, it’s a lot quicker and you don’t get a lot of time to think about your answers. Some of the questions are more searching too.

“We were there last year so we have a good idea of what to expect and I think we can do well.”