The last few weeks have been very successful ones for the Sevenoaks School Debating Society.
Two teams have qualified for each of the finals of the Oxford and Cambridge Unions’ School Debating Competitions. These are amongst the largest and most prestigious British Parliamentary school-level debate competitions in the UK.
On Monday 30 January, Si Kai Feng, Mominn Nawaz, Prity Laloux and Olivia Pigram (all L6) qualified in second and third place at the Oxford South East Regional round and will now attend Finals Day at the Oxford Union on Saturday 11 March.
On Saturday 4 February, the society had further success with Si Kai, Lora Kateva, Suhani Kotecha and Valerie Yukselen (also L6) qualifying in first and seventh place at the Cambridge South East Regional round. Si Kai was the top speaker and Lora came in third. They too will now attend finals day at the Cambridge Union on Saturday 18 March.
Qualifying from these regional rounds is hard. At Oxford, only the top six of forty five eligible teams went through and at Cambridge only the top eight from forty eligible teams qualified. Our students will now go on to compete in the national finals day at the Oxford and Cambridge Unions where they will face the top debating teams from across the UK and Ireland as well some elite international school teams. We wish them luck.
This follows up on some earlier successes in the year when Si Kai and Mominn came fifth at the Warwick Schools Debating Competition and Si Kai qualified for the England National Debating B Team.
