On Friday 3rd July, a handful of boys from year 8 and 9 spent the day at the Girls’ School for a debating day. The morning started off with breakfast which was followed by an icebreaker led by prefects. Soon after this, some students from the Haberdashers’ Aske’s Knights Academy joined the proceedings to begin the day. After this, the students split into three groups in which they were on a carousel of workshops organised by either prefects or a parent at the Girls’ School. The workshops covered: posture, voice projection, how to debate and argument structure. This took up the rest of the morning and after this everyone had lunch in the Headmistress’s garden.
After lunch, there were two short lectures, the first about the importance of public speaking which was led by a barrister, and one about the benefits of debating from an ex-student. After these lectures were over, the debating began. The groups were given the motion of “This house believes that sportsmen/women should have an equal salary”. After 15 minutes of prep time the debates began, which lasted for the best part of an hour. After a gruelling hour, the teams assembled for the final time as a group in the atrium for prize giving.
Congratulations to Jack Davis, Sam Grankin, Stanley Dench and Ray Kenton for being awarded best speaker prizes. Finally, thanks must go to Miss Leigh and Mr Eyre-Maunsell for overseeing the proceedings, and to the prefects and teachers at the Girls’ School for organising the event.