The gifted students were selected from up to 10 of the region’s schools to learn as much about the humanitarian problem over two days and apply it to a range of education disciplines.

This was all part of the Grammar Challenge – an event hosted by Launceston Church Grammar School at its Button Street senior campus, now in its 18^th year.

The challenge allows children to examine topics that sit outside the regular primary school curriculum and exposes them to a variety of challenges outside traditional classroom settings.

This year’s challenge was titled Displaced: The Refugee Crisis and the day was spent learning about the pertinent world issue in abstract, creative and positive ways.

Teams of four spent Saturday morning designing shirts with slogans that appealed for acceptance, such as “refugees are people too” and “we need to fix the mix”.

Challege co-ordinator Doug Grubert said the students had all approached tasks with enthusiasm and vigour with unique insight.

“The challenge is about bringing highly capable grade six students from around Tasmanian schools, allowing them to meet and interact with each other and compete in a variety of challenges based on a single theme,” he said.

Mr Grubert said teachers has taken precautions in exposing the plight of asylum seekers and internally displaced people to young children.

“These challenges involve 11 and 12 year olds so we’ve deliberately steered away from focussing on the conflicts, the violence and the deaths,” he said.

“What we want the students to understand first and foremost is the magnitude of the problem and the fact that 60 million people – three times the population of Australia – are living as refugees.

“They are also looking at where it’s a problem because the mainstream media tends to focus on certain parts of the story.”

According to the Refugee Council of Australia, 2780 asylum seekers came to Australia as refugees – or 0.09 per cent of the global total.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees estimates that about 42,500 people are displaced each day.

Almost one in four of the world’s refugees identify themselves as Syrian.

The Challenge continues today and each school group will vy for challenge awards in graphic design, drama and the prized Spirit of the Challenge award.

Awards will be announced at the end of the event.