St Paul’s pupil steps onto global stage

Karl Galliano, a Year 2 pupil at St Paul’s First School, recently participated in the World Education Games and finished in joint 33rd place out of five million participants worldwide.

With a score of 243, Karl is securely in the competition’s Science Hall of Fame. His feat has been championed by Education Minister, Gilbert Licudi, who said it was an “extraordinary achievement”.

The World Education Games is organised in association with 3P Learning and UNICEF, and is ‘the world’s largest free online education competition held every two years’. Over five million students from 166 countries worldwide participated in these Games.

World Maths Day is a part of the World Education Games setup, and First and Middle Schools in Gibraltar are strongly encouraged to participate.

Students log on to the World Maths Day website and compete against other children around the world in maths quizzes that are tailored to specific age groups. Children are enrolled in the Games by their schools and given login details to enable them to access the website both at school and at home.

When Karl first logged on to the site he started with the Maths games and then moved onto the English games. Once Karl had completed the Maths and English sections of the site, he continued to the Science games.

Karl’s mum said: ‘Karl had the most fun completing this one as it was a game where he had to shoot at targets worth different amount of points and answer the questions behind the targets.’

In each set of games Karl was pitted against three other children his own age, from different parts of the world. Karl remembers a Japanese flag and an American flag from some of his opponents during the science challenges.

This time though he had to be quick to shoot the targets before his opponents did in order to answer the questions. But, as mum soon realised, Karl ‘got the hang of it rather quickly,’ although Karl did say that ‘the other children were quick as well.’

The results of all the games were released once all the data had been collated. Winners’ lists and Hall of Fame top 100s were constructed and placed online on the World Education Games website.

Each Year group in each category; Maths, English and Science had the top 100 scorers ranked according to their overall score. Of the millions of children worldwide who entered the competition and played the games, those who excelled came within the top 100.

The flags of their country are published alongside their ranking, followed by the student’s name and school, and finally, their score. In the top third of the top 100 in the Year 2 Science Hall of Fame 2015, Karl succeeded in securing joint 33rd, with a score of 243.

Mr Licudi added: ‘Very well done, Karl. This is an extraordinary achievement. You have worked extremely hard and done yourself, your school and the whole of Gibraltar so proud. I’m very glad that you had fun and enjoyed the learning experience. Keep up the good work.’