English Students Venture Forth into the EU


Bishop Heber High School, Malpas had been chosen as the school that would represent England at the “Euroscola" conference in Strasbourg, France. Due to organisational problems it wasn't possible to get enough people from our school to go so we joined together with three other schools from South-Cheshire and North-Shropshire (North-west England). Seventeen went from my school, Bishop Heber High School and we were joined by twelve students from Sir John Talbots High School, Whitchurch; three from Tarporley High School and one sole student from the Catholic High school in Chester. Schools from England have been attending this event for several years and it has never happened that students from different schools have been joined together for it so the organisers had doubted at first that such a group would work. Three teachers went with us and the organiser - Mr. John Barnet who has been taking schools each year for the last six years to the Euroscola conference. We were also joined by a newspaper reporter for the “Chester Chronicle" who would be recording our journey so that he could make a report later in the local press. On Sunday November 2nd we all set off by coach to the North Sea port of Hull where we took an overnight ferry to the Europort in Rotterdam. The ferry journey turned out to be quite an eventful time as very few people actually managed to get any sleep at all. From Rotterdam we carried on to Brussels, Belgium where we met up with two of our local MEP's at the European Parliament there. They talked to us for about an hour at which point most of us were straining to stay awake from the effects of the previous night! We then went into the viewers gallery where we observed a meeting of MEP's(Member of European Parliament) taking place. Whilst we were there we watched and listened to an irate MEP about something that none of us understood at all even though we could receive a translation into each of the eleven recognised European languages! After this we left Brussels to go to Namur, Belgium where we stayed the night in a hotel and actually got some sleep! At this point the organiser and the teachers with us were getting rather worried about the prospect of the striking French lorry drivers who had been surrounding all of the French ports and also the French border which we were going to have to cross the next day. The newspaper reporter with us - who speaks very good French - spent most of the evening phoning the police to make sure that we would be able to get through the border to France. On Tuesday all of us were a little disgruntled as we had to get up at 6:00a.m so we could leave early in case we did get held up. We travelled across Belgium; through Luxembourg and then across the border into France with no French lorry drivers in sight! In fact the motorways were practically deserted so we figured that everyone else must have been expecting not to get through the border. We arrived in Strasbourg late that afternoon so we were able to spend the rest of the day relaxing. Wednesday was a very important day for as this was basically the purpose of our visit as we would be attending the “EuroScola" conference. There were also groups of people our age from each of the other countries in the European Union. As is turned out there had originally been organisational problems for the actual day of the conference so only representatives from eight countries attended. We arrived at the European Parliament building at about 8:30 in the morning and we were greeted (and searched for explosive devices - common practice I believe) and all three-hundred students from across Europe gathered for a light breakfast so there was a chance to meet each other before the day started properly. We were then guided into the conference room where all of the MEP's normally gather for their plenary meetings so we got to sit the actual seats that they do. Following this were short speeches from a representative from each school attending the conference about the area which they live in and the school that they are at. We were then greeted by the president of the European Union, another MEP and a professor from Strasbourg university (whose names escape me at the moment!). They talked to us for about two hours and at the end of that one of them had the cheek to make a comment that a few people had been falling asleep and they assumed that we had all been out to discos the night before and didn't get any sleep. We thought this was outrageous as most people had spent the last two days travelling to actually get there so that was the reason for peoples tiredness (of course no on from our group actually went to bed until about 1:00am but that just isn't the point!). After this we were given chance to ask the three speakers questions about the European Union so this was a chance to get our own back! One person in our group almost succeeded in confusing them which was something to be proud of. During lunch we had to get into groups to work on a “Euro-game" which was a quiz we had to do written in many different languages. We had to get unto groups of four each person being from a different country and it was very important that we worked as a team as no single person in each group would be able to translate every language that it was written in.

Most of the questions that we had to answer were on the constitution of the European Union and Parliament and we didn't know the answers to many of them but I enjoyed it anyway. After lunch we were split off into five pre-arranged groups to discuss various European Issues. The group that I was in had the job of debating the youths expect and want from the European Union which wasn't really a very simple task. We discussed this in smaller groups of about 6 or 7 people with each person being from a different country. This turned out to be very difficult as communicating in different languages about such complicated things was almost impossible - we just about managed it though! We then went back into the main conference hall where on person from each of the five groups presented what conclusions their group had on the topics which they discussed. After this we used the electronic voting system which is installed in the desks that everyone had in front of them to give our opinion on which reports we agreed with most. The one that was most popular will be presented to all of the MEP's in the next plenary session so that they can hear our opinion on the EU. We left the European Parliament building shortly after this with everyone thinking that it had been a very successful and worthwhile day as it gave us all a chance to voice our own opinions on the future of Europe as Union of nations. This was to be our last day in Strasbourg before we began our journey back to Belgium so we all used it has a chance to our enjoy ourselves before we had to set off for our journey home. Although, we were a little unenthusiastic about having to get up at 5:30 the next morning. We departed Strasbourg at around 7:00a.m and we had a very long journey back to Belgium. We stopped at Bruge before going to Zeebrugge to get on a ferry for our return trip to Hull, England. We all arrived back at school just before lunch time on Friday very tired as most people got considerably less than twenty hours sleep in the whole week - that includes the teachers who went as well who incidentally made us stay in school for most of the afternoon so we could briefly discuss the success of the trip. I would lastly just like to thank Mr. Barnet (the trip organiser who made it all possible); the teacher who took us - Mrs Williams, another Mrs. Williams and Mr. Livesey; the newspaper reporter who accompanied us - Mr. Glendon, and finally everyone who went for making it such an enjoyable trip for all.

By Mark Stockton, Bishop Heber High School