The Debating Society has had an extraordinarily successful few weeks.
All four of our teams have qualified for the Oxford Union Schools Debating Competition finals. Congratulations to Luke Ashworth, Marcus Choy, Nilou Davis, Siming Feng, Ellie Gilbert-Bair, Sian McAllister and Ilyas Shahril Ridza (Lower Sixth) and Kieran Kiggell (Year 11). This is in addition to two teams – Marcus, Luke, Kieran and Ilyas – qualifying for the Cambridge Finals. This is an outstanding achievement in these two extremely competitive international competitions.
Meanwhile, two of our newest debaters, Aryan and Raya, also won the Novice Final of the UCL schools debating competition – their first ever competition. Each team of two is given only 15 minutes – with no access to online resources – to prepare to tackle motions such as ‘This house would criminalise the payment of ransoms’ or ‘This house believes that it is legitimate for states to refuse the admission of refugees who oppose said state’s core values’.