Westlake Girls Launches into the EPro8 Engineering Challenge!
This year marks an exciting first for Westlake Girls as we enter the EPro8 Challenge for 2026.
The EPro8 Challenge is one of New Zealand’s largest inter-school science and engineering competitions, with more than 35,000 students participating nationwide each year. Designed to promote innovation, teamwork and problem-solving, the competition sees students working against the clock to design and build practical engineering solutions using mechanical and electrical components.
Westlake will be entering two Year 9 teams (eight students in total) to compete in the Inter-School Heats in August. From there, teams have the opportunity to progress to Semi-Finals and ultimately the Grand Final. As this is our inaugural year, we are starting with two teams, with the hope of expanding the programme in future as we grow our resources.
We are fortunate to have Ms Alex Van Der Loos, an experienced STEAM teacher who has previously coached EPro8 teams at her previous school, leading weekly training sessions. Students will develop hands-on skills using official competition kits, strengthen their engineering knowledge, and practise working collaboratively under time pressure.
The EPro8 Challenge aligns closely with our STEAM values, fostering creativity, critical thinking, problem solving and collaboration. We look forward to seeing our students represent Westlake Girls in this dynamic national event and to building this exciting new opportunity within our school community.
Students pictured below:
Elly Li
Jiamin Khaw
Hifza Abubakkar
Anahya Garimella
Isha Nair
Isabella Gillego
Erin Yao
Nika Daneshvar Ghorbani
