Winter Debating

Year 10 debaters triumphed at our latest debating event – the biggest single-day debate contest in the UK!

We were thrilled to welcome 132 teams from over 30 different schools to our winter competition, where students debated a variety of topics: Should you leave a silo that you, and everyone you’ve ever known, have lived in for over 100 years? Should The Obama Foundation empower changemakers of all ideologies, or only some? Should political parties have binding manifesto pledges that trigger a snap election if broken? 

Over the course of an intense day, pupils delivered 138 debates and 1104 speeches with great confidence and conviction, with our girls up against experienced teams from schools including Brighton College, Dulwich, St Paul’s Girls’, Westminster, Wycombe Abbey and top grammar schools. Many congratulations to our Year 10 debaters Matilda and Nina who won the Juniors Gold Final, and to Decca who was awarded best speaker out of 120 students. Our thanks to Sex Ed Matters for their sponsorship of the event, and for giving a short talk on how to be a changemaker.

Debate Hub, the cornerstone of our partnership work, empowers hundreds of young people to find their voice. Earlier this term, we hosted the biggest primary school debating competition in the UK, when dozens of our Senior School debaters helped to judge over 100 debates and 600 speeches delivered by nearly 200 state school pupils. If you or your company are interested in expert coaching sessions run by our Debate Hub coaches, and would like to support more young people across the UK to find their voice, find out more here.